CHI95FA148 · Cessna 177B
Cessna 177B · Accident: partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From C08 · IN to RLA · Fowler, IN
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI95FA148
- 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
- 1 · 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 177B
- 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
- N11372
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From C08 · INTo RLA · Fowler, IN
- 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 · cruise
- 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
- Partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
WITNESSES OBSERVED THE AIRPLANE FLYING LOW WITH A ROUGH RUNNING ENGINE AND BLACK SMOKE COMING FROM THE EXHAUST PIPE. THEY SAID THE AIRPLANE ENTERED A STEEP LEFT BANK, DESCENDED TOWARD THE GROUND IN A STEEP PITCH DOWN ATTITUDE, LEVELED OFF AT TREE TOP HEIGHT AND PITCHED DOWN AGAIN. IT COLLIDED WITH THE GROUND AND BOUNCED INTO THE AIR, COLLIDING WITH THE GROUND A SECOND TIME. THE CENTER FUSELAGE, ENGINE COMPARTMENT, AND INBOARD SECTIONS OF THE WINGS WERE CONSUMED BY FIRE. THE CARBURETOR CONTAINED COMPOSITE FLOATS WHICH WERE CHARRED AND BELLOWED OUTWARD. THE CARBURETOR MANUFACTURER PUBLISHED A MANDATORY SERVICE BULLETIN REQUIRING REPLACEMENT OF THE COMPOSITE FLOATS WITH METAL ONES. NO RECORD OF THIS BEING DONE WAS OBSERVED IN THE ACCIDENT AIRPLANE'S ENGINE OR AIRFRAME LOGBOOKS.
Probable cause
airplane control was not maintained by the pilot during the his turn to an emergency landing area. Factors associated with this accident were the pilot not complying with the manufacturer's mandatory service bulletin, and an excessive fuel flow caused by the partial failure of the carburetor's float system.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI95FA148
- Event ID
- 20001207X03418
- Case number
- CHI95FA148
- 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: investigation status. 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: 288b900f31fe78b1c7002a913b5c8f3c619b05b421e3406f0c9e03106a25cf59; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:47:22.079Z.