ANC24LA025 · Cessna 120
Cessna 120 · Accident: powerplant system/component malfunction/failure during takeoff
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC24LA025
- 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
- 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 120
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 120
- 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
- N77032
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 78 years (built 1946)
- 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
- 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
- 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
The pilot reported that the engine rpm began to fluctuate just after takeoff, so he turned back to the airport and verified the fuel selector position. During the turn the engine lost all power and the pilot made a forced landing into snow-covered terrain short of the runway. The airplane’s landing gear dug into the snow, and the airplane nosed over and came to rest inverted. A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed the airplane contained about half a tank of fuel. Fuel was present throughout the fuel system; no obstructions were observed in the gascolator fuel strainer or the in-line fuel screen in the carburetor. The P-lead connections into both the left and right magnetos were loose. The crankshaft was rotated and only one spark plug lead produced a spark. The magnetos were placed on a test bench and all but three of the leads produced a strong spark. The installed spark plugs were in worn-out condition. Five of the sparkplugs had excessive gaps between the ground electrode and the center electrode. Inspection of the ignition system and P lead connections should have occurred during the last annual inspection. It is likely that the degraded, poorly maintained ignition system resulted in the total loss of engine power.
Probable cause
A degraded ignition system, which resulted in a total loss of engine power. Contributing to the accident was maintenance personnel’s inadequate inspection of the ignition system.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC24LA025
- Event ID
- 20240422194123
- Case number
- ANC24LA025
- 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: e08190e5fba3cde217a3819eefe4ab204159f8a87d33767864887f143247dc04; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:41:08.815Z.