CEN25LA100 · Cessna 180 K
Cessna 180 K · Accident: loss of engine power (total) while maneuvering
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN25LA100
- 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
- 0
- 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 180 K
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 180
- 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
- N597JC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 46 years (built 1979)
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Following an avionics equipment installation, the pilot flew a local flight with a technician to check the newly installed avionics. The departure and maneuvering for a practice approach were uneventful. At glideslope intercept, the pilot brought the throttle to idle for the airplane to decelerate. After a few moments, the pilot noticed the airplane wasn’t decelerating and adjusted the propeller to help create drag to slow the airplane. About 800 ft above ground level, the pilot added throttle for a practice missed approach while the engine was running smoothly, but the engine did not respond. The pilot was unable to restore engine power and made a forced landing to a field. During the forced landing, the airplane collided with small mesquite trees and came to rest inverted resulting in substantial damage to the wings and fuselage. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that the throttle cable to the carburetor was found disconnected, and the castellated nut and cotter pin were not located. The recent avionics installation required the temporary removal of the engine throttle cable. Based on available evidence, it is likely that the mechanic did not properly reinstall the cotter pin resulting in the separation of the cable and a loss of engine throttle cable control.
Probable cause
The mechanic’s failure to properly install the throttle cable hardware resulting in a separation of the cable and loss of engine throttle control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN25LA100
- Event ID
- 20250218199714
- Case number
- CEN25LA100
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- 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: f55c57d1869dc3f1ec4361f5f417780de9196d6732125681520a377a9a02a61d; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:40:17.255Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: damage. Narrative states the forced landing resulted in substantial damage to the wings and fuselage, not destruction.