LAX99LA159 · Cessna R182
Cessna R182 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From San Luis County Regional Airport (SBP) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX99LA159
- 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 R182
- 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
- N7317X
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From San Luis County Regional Airport (SBP), CATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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 · descent
- First occurrenceThe 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
- Total loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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
- Fuel system › Contamination, water
- Pilot in command › Aircraft preflight, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he was about 6 miles northwest of the airport, returning to the airport for landing, the engine abruptly and completely ceased delivering power. The aircraft descended through a stratus cloud layer and broke out beneath a 900-foot ceiling. The pilot determined that the aircraft would not glide to the airport and made an emergency landing in an open field beside a highway. The right wing struck a sign during the landing. FAA inspectors reported that the engine fuel sump contained a clear fluid resembling water, and that the right-hand fuel tank sump drain had a threaded plug installed which precluded routine sampling of the tank for water.
Probable cause
The inadequate preflight inspection of the aircraft by the pilot-in-command which resulted in a loss of engine power due to water contamination in the fuel system. A factor in the accident was an improper maintenance alteration which disabled a fuel sump drain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX99LA159
- Event ID
- 20001205X00506
- Case number
- LAX99LA159
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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 1999-04-21.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 2dab42f7f27127619b69d1159a54a0e17fcae181d53922309c57dd7dcccfde0c; retrieved 2026-09-22T15:25:43.860Z.