ERA23LA331 · Cessna 175
Cessna 175 · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) en route
From Herlong Airport (KHEG) to Shelby County Airport (KEET)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA23LA331
- 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 175
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 175
- 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
- N7117M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Herlong Airport (KHEG), Jacksonville, FLTo Shelby County Airport (KEET), Calera, AL
- Aircraft age
- About 65 years (built 1958)
- 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 · cruise
- 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
While enroute to the destination airport the pilot described that the engine “shuddered” before smoke began emanating from the engine area and entered the cockpit. The pilot then attempted to land at a diversionary airport and during the diversion described that the engine intermittently lost power and he observed sparks and flames emanating from it. Upon reaching the midpoint of the diversionary runway, the airplane was flying at too fast of an airspeed to land, so the pilot performed a go-around, during which the engine lost power and the propeller stopped rotating completely. The airplane subsequently struck trees and was substantially damaged. Postaccident examination of the wreckage revealed that the engine’s crankcase was breached in the vicinity of the No. 3 cylinder. A deformed connecting rod was recovered, but the connecting rod's end cap was not. The crankshaft journal exhibited heavy mechanical damage. An unquantified amount of oil residue was found in the engine cowling and on the airframe. The wreckage was subsequently sold for salvage and a further detailed examination of the engine could not be completed. Based on this information, the loss of engine power was likely the result of the separation of the No. 3 connecting rod from the crankshaft.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to the separation of the No. 3 connecting rod from the crankshaft.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA23LA331
- Event ID
- 20230813192849
- Case number
- ERA23LA331
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2023-08-11.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 7aca11a6d30b973043f8f69a5dd51cd2c50ec735f87e7656ac40d2d6120e1245; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:59:20.730Z.