CEN25LA360 · Cessna 172H
Cessna 172H · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) during initial climb
From Goliad, TX to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN25LA360
- 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
- Ongoing
- 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 172H
- 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
- N8078L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Goliad, TXTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 58 years (built 1967)
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On August 27, 2025, about 1904 central daylight time, a Cessna 172H airplane, N8078L, was substantially damaged when it was involved in an accident near Goliad, Texas. The pilot was not injured. The airplane was operated as a Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91 personal flight. The pilot reported that he conducted a preflight inspection with no anomalies noted, and the airplane contained about 10 gallons of 100LL aviation fuel in each wing tank. During the initial climb when the airplane reached about 300 ft above ground level, the engine lost partial power. The pilot adjusted the throttle in an attempt to restore power but was unsuccessful and conducted a forced landing to a road. During the rollout, the right wing struck a light pole resulting in substantial damage to the right wing and right aileron. After the accident, the pilot found a spider nest inside the left fuel vent. The fuel selector was selected to BOTH tanks at the time of the loss of engine power. The airplane was retained for further examination.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN25LA360
- Event ID
- 20250903200934
- Case number
- CEN25LA360
- 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. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2025-08-28.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ee13eea6491b34ff5e607c4c037b2912579ec7573ec5863d5ecf374968ff228c; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:18:09.398Z.