CEN21LA358 · Cessna 182 T
Westbank Fishing Cessna 182 T · Accident: powerplant system/component malfunction/failure en route
From Harry P Williams Memorial Airport (KPTN) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN21LA358
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Cessna 182 T
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N148LP
- Operator
- Westbank Fishing
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Harry P Williams Memorial Airport (KPTN), Patterson, LATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 19 years (built 2002)
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- En route
- Defining eventThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Powerplant system/component malfunction/failure
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, shortly after takeoff, the engine would not respond to throttle inputs. The engine then went to idle without pilot input, and the pilot performed a forced landing to a marsh. During the forced landing, the airplane nosed over and was substantially damaged. Postaccident examination of the airplane found that the nut used to properly secure the throttle control to the fuel servo was loose. The associated cotter pin was not located. The pilot reported that the airplane’s most recent maintenance occurred on April 1, 2021. The mechanic likely did not install the cotter pin at that time. The accident airplane flew about 438 hours between that date and the accident date. During that time, the nut likely loosened until the throttle control was no longer secured, resulting in a total loss of engine power during the accident flight.
Probable cause
The mechanic’s failure to properly secure the throttle arm rendering it loose and inoperable after takeoff, which resulted in a total loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN21LA358
- Event ID
- 20210805103645
- Case number
- CEN21LA358
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: d2ade97a5278bab673e711aecfac40278ec7bed69a20e8af1154e622b3852aae; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:22:57.357Z.