WPR21FA340 · Cessna 177RG
Cessna 177RG · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) during takeoff
From an unrecorded airport to Eagle Airpark (A09)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR21FA340
- 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
- 1 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- 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 177RG
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 177
- 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
- N2085Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Eagle Airpark (A09), Bullhead City, AZ
- Aircraft age
- About 47 years (built 1974)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Loss of engine power (partial)
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was departing at a slow groundspeed, and the engine sounded as if it was producing partial power. The airplane did not ascend as expected and veered to the right of the centerline. The airplane then pitched up to a nose-high attitude and made an aggressive left bank, consistent with pilot attempting to make 180° turn to the runway while making a radio transmission that he did not complete. The airplane’s wingspan turned nearly perpendicular to the horizon and then stalled with the left wing dropping toward terrain. The airplane subsequently impacted terrain, and a postcrash fire ensued.
The terrain ahead of the accident site was uninhabited and populated with low brush. If the pilot had considered landing there instead of making a 180° turn, the outcome of this accident might have been different.
A postaccident examination revealed that two piston rings were fractured and that the pistons showed evidence of excessive wear and heat. The extensive wear on the piston ring surfaces indicated that they had fractured before the accident and were continuing to wear during the accident flight when the pistons actuated inside the cylinders. Fracture and wear of the rings likely resulted in blow-by of combustion gases past the cylinder and oil leakage into the combustion chamber. The lifter surfaces were spalled, the cam lobes were worn, and one of the lifter bodies was cracked, all consistent with excessive wear. The fractured rings, a lack of sealing, and blow-by would all have contributed to partial engine power and led to an airplane stall and a loss of altitude.
Three days before the accident, the pilot had sent samples of the engine oil for analysis and did not receive the results before the accident. The oil sample exhibited elevated aluminum, chromium, iron, silicon, and nickel levels. A previous oil sample report had stated that the amounts of aluminum, chromium, and iron would indicate piston, ring, and steel wear. All were indications of the excessive wear of the engine components and broken piston rings, which likely would result in blowby and contribute to the partial loss of power.
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power during the airplane's initial climb due to wear of internal engine components, which prevented the engine from developing full-rated power and resulted in a loss of altitude.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR21FA340
- Event ID
- 20210913103838
- Case number
- WPR21FA340
- 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, coordinates, 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: ba383ab119f3da6f5f1d7926377fab1f896640a76a2070758a9201b45e44f37f; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:34:00.190Z.