ERA26LA093 · Cessna 177 B
Cessna 177 B · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport (Lovell Field) (CHA) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA26LA093
- 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
- 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 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
- N34959
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport (Lovell Field) (CHA), Chattanooga, TNTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 52 years (built 1974)
- 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
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 January 13, 2026, about 1530 eastern standard time, a Cessna 177B, N34959, was substantially damaged when it was involved in an accident near Ocoee, Tennessee. The pilot received minor injuries. The airplane was operated as a Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91 personal flight. According to the pilot, the airplane had been undergoing maintenance for the past 11 months following a propeller strike. The repairs and the annual inspection were completed the day before the accident flight. After refueling the fuel tanks and performing a preflight inspection, with no anomalies observed, he departed from Lovell Field Airport (CHA), Chattanooga, Tennessee, and proceeded east. About 20 minutes after departure, and at an altitude of 4,500 ft mean sea level (msl), the engine rpm increased to 3,000 rpm, which is 300 rpm above the engine’s maximum operating rpm, followed by an engine vibration. The pilot declared an emergency to air traffic control but determined he would be unable to reach the nearest airport and initiated a forced landing in a field. During the landing rollout, the airplane continued into a wooded area and impacted trees. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed it had sustained substantial damage to the wings, the fuselage, and the horizontal stabilator. A coating consistent with engine oil was observed on the left side of the engine and fuselage. The wreckage was retained for further examination.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA26LA093
- Event ID
- 20260114202297
- Case number
- ERA26LA093
- 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. 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: 7dc0aab0baf7a082f5e12eb82f70498920902afd3552bce2dd8aa8488f14fc5b; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:40:25.149Z.