ERA23LA162 · Cessna 177 B
Cessna 177 B · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Pickens County Airport (LQK) to Hendersonville Airport (0A7)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA23LA162
- 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 177 B
- 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
- N13612
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pickens County Airport (LQK), Pickens, SCTo Hendersonville Airport (0A7), Hendersonville, NC
- Aircraft age
- About 47 years (built 1976)
- 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
- Loss of engine power (total)
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
About 15 minutes after takeoff during an instructional flight, the engine backfired several times and 5 to 10 seconds later the engine lost total power. The flight instructor assumed control of the airplane, maintained a 75-knot glide speed, and attempted to restart the engine, but without success. The flight instructor landed in a recently plowed field and, while at a slow groundspeed, the nose wheel settled into the mud and the airplane nosed over, resulting in substantial damage to the fuselage and both wings.
The postaccident examination of the engine revealed that the single-drive dual magneto was not delivering power to the spark plugs. The examination of the magneto revealed that, while the left and right contact assemblies of the magneto were properly secured, neither of them opened during rotation of the rotating magnet assembly. Thus, with rotation of the magnet and the contact assembly points closed, the electrical path was shorting to ground, and not the normal path to the ignition leads, which likely resulted in the total loss of engine power. The left and right breaker cam followers, which would open each contact assembly after contacting a lobe of the breaker cam, was worn to less than the minimum specified for a new part and was insufficient to open the contact assembly points. Both cam followers exhibited accelerated wear and heat signatures consistent with lack of lubrication. Each felt pad, which provided lubrication to the oil-impregnated breaker cam, was dark and dry consistent with lack of lubrication.
The magneto had operated satisfactory for nearly 40 years and 1,362 hours and then underwent a 500-hour inspection about 112 hours and 3 years before the accident, during which each cam follower was in satisfactory condition and displayed no abnormal wear. During that inspection the mechanic likely improperly cleaned the breaker cam and used incorrect oil to lubricate the felt of each cam follower. Thus, the improper servicing of the magneto likely resulted in the accelerated wear and heat signatures observed, both of which were consistent with lack of lubrication of each cam follower.
Probable cause
Maintenance personnel’s improper servicing of the magneto, which resulted in its accelerated wear, failure, and the total loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA23LA162
- Event ID
- 20230324106949
- Case number
- ERA23LA162
- 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: f846b68df180635264f8c7807c1f86ad33da65d4f3d587aca1b44a05b080c4dc; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:27:18.543Z.