ERA26LA197 · Cessna 182 D
Cessna 182 D · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) en route
From Eastern WV Regional Airport/Shepherd Field (MRB) to Fairfield County Airport (LHQ)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA26LA197
- 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 182 D
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- N9069X
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Eastern WV Regional Airport/Shepherd Field (MRB), Martinsburg, WVTo Fairfield County Airport (LHQ), Lancaster, OH
- Aircraft age
- About 65 years (built 1961)
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On May 3, 2026, about 2241 eastern daylight time, a Cessna 182D, N9069X, was substantially damaged when it was involved in an accident near Lancaster, Ohio. The pilot and one passenger sustained minor injuries. The airplane was operated as a Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91 personal flight. The pilot reported that he planned four flights the day of the accident for the purpose of building flight time. The first flight originated at Fairfield County Airport (LHQ), Lancaster, Ohio with a destination of Warren County Airport (I68), Lebanon, Ohio. The pilot completely fueled the inboard wing fuel tanks at I68, with the addition of 39 gallons of 100LL aviation gasoline. He then departed I68 and returned to LHQ. From LHQ, the pilot flew to Eastern WV Regional Airport (MRB), Martinsburg, West Virginia. The accident flight, which was the fourth and final flight for the day, departed MRB destined for LHQ. About 6 miles east of the LHQ airport, about 3,000 ft mean sea level, the pilot reported a partial loss of engine power, which he described as the engine “sputtering.” The pilot attempted to make an emergency landing in a field. During the landing, the airplane struck trees and impacted terrain, which resulted in substantial damage to the wings and fuselage. A witness on the ground, near the accident site heard the airplane, and described the engine noise as a “sputtering engine at low RPM.” The airframe and engine were retained for further examination. Additionally, a JPI Fuel Scan 450 was recovered from the wreckage and forwarded to the NTSB Vehicle Recorders Laboratory, Washington, DC for download.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA26LA197
- Event ID
- 20260504202927
- Case number
- ERA26LA197
- 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. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2026-05-04.
- API snapshot SHA-256: a532928066738258f32d2dc04727df8e84c95bbe2a2e230f22431eb6ed282926; retrieved 2026-09-16T21:22:42.743Z.