SEA94LA207 · Cessna 182P
Cessna 182P · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) on approach
From Mountain Home Municipal Airport (U76) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA94LA207
- 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 182P
- 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
- N20818
- Operator
- Cryder, Donald S. · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mountain Home Municipal Airport (U76), Mountain Home, IDTo 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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)
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Fuel starvation; Wire, transmission
- 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
- Fluid, fuel › Starvation
- Pilot in command › Emergency procedure, improper
- Pilot in command › Fuel tank selector position, not identified
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PILOT-IN-COMMAND (PIC) STATED THAT HE MOVED THE FUEL SELECTOR VALVE CONTROL FROM THE 'RIGHT TANK' POSITION TO WHAT HE THOUGHT WAS THE 'BOTH TANK' POSITION AS THE AIRPLANE APPROACHED THE AIRPORT FOR A NIGHT LANDING. THE PIC HAD ACTUALLY TURNED THE CONTROL TO THE 'OFF' POSITION. HE DID NOT VISUALLY CHECK THE POSITION OF THE CONTROL WHEN HE FIRST MOVED IT, NOR DID HE CHECK IT AGAIN DURING THE FORCED LANDING AS PER THE AIRPLANE'S PUBLISHED EMERGENCY PROCEDURE CHECKLIST. THE ENGINE QUIT AND THE AIRPLANE STRUCK A POWER LINE DURING THE SUBSEQUENT FORCED LANDING ATTEMPT. NO PRE-IMPACT MECHANICAL MALFUNCTIONS WERE FOUND WITH THE AIRPLANE.
Probable cause
FUEL STARVATION DUE TO THE PILOT-IN-COMMAND'S FAILURE TO VERIFY THE FUEL TANK SELECTOR POSITION DURING THE APPROACH, AND HIS FAILURE TO PERFORM THE PUBLISHED EMERGENCY PROCEDURES FOR AN ENGINE-OUT SITUATION. A FACTOR IN THE ACCIDENT WAS A TRANSMISSION WIRE.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA94LA207
- Event ID
- 20001206X02138
- Case number
- SEA94LA207
- 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 1994-08-09.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 77591e0392cbb4ea65ad17b0a30fd4b30bcb4e683c14573ac164da890c7c0727; retrieved 2026-09-23T00:50:36.367Z.