ERA22LA411 · Cessna 172 M
Cessna 172 M · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) during initial climb
From an unrecorded airport to Henderson Oxford Airport (HNZ)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA22LA411
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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 172 M
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- 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
- N9619H
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Henderson Oxford Airport (HNZ), Henderson, NC
- Aircraft age
- About 47 years (built 1975)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During initial climb, about 300 ft above ground level, the airplane’s engine began shaking and lost partial power. The pilot lowered the nose and saw that the airplane was still over the runway but too close to the end to land on the remaining runway. He made a “hard” left turn in an attempt to land on the runway in the opposite direction. He also turned the fuel selector to off in preparation for an off-airport impact. The engine subsequently lost all power (due to the fuel being turned off), and the airplane impacted a field, coming to rest upright in a wooded area at the edge of the field.
A postaccident compression check performed when the engine was cold revealed no compression on the No. 1 cylinder and low compression on the No. 3 cylinder; however, the engine was subsequently started and run at idle power, with no anomalies noted. After shutdown, removal of the Nos. 1 and 3 cylinders revealed scoring on the No. 1 piston skirt and cylinder wall. The scoring was consistent with material entering the cylinder as a result of tappet to camshaft wearing, which also would have affected the intake and exhaust valves opening and closing properly. While this condition may have reduced the engine’s ability to produce full takeoff power; it would not have resulted in the sudden loss of engine performance described by the pilot. Given the engine’s subsequent normal operation postaccident, the reason for the partial loss of engine power could not be determined.
Probable cause
A sudden partial loss of engine power for undetermined reasons, which resulted in an off-airport landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA22LA411
- Event ID
- 20220913105921
- Case number
- ERA22LA411
- 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: d38b434768a23ba17fb00f76ae1b995304dbb7b93e8668492f60996f962b9341; retrieved 2026-09-16T15:59:49.611Z.