CHI95LA248 · Cessna 172
Cessna 172 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Clintonville Municipal Airport (CLI) to South Bend International Airport (SBN)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI95LA248
- 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 172
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- 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
- N7295A
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Clintonville Municipal Airport (CLI), Clintonville, WITo South Bend International Airport (SBN), South Bend, 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
- 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 exhaustion
- 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
- Pilot in command › Mixture, improper
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PILOT EXPERIENCED TOTAL LOSS OF ENGINE POWER AFTER APPROXIMATELY THREE HOURS OF FLIGHT. INVESTIGATION REVEALED THAT THE AIRCRAFT'S FUEL SUPPLY WAS EXHAUSTED. THE PILOT TOLD INVESTIGATORS THAT HE CHECKED THE AIRCRAFT FUEL QUANTITY BEFORE TAKEOFF BY INSERTING HIS FINGER INTO EACH TANK FILLER NECK. HE ALSO REPORTED THAT HE HAD CRUISED THE ENTIRE FLIGHT AT 2500 TO 3500 FEET ALTITUDE WITH THE ENGINE MIXTURE CONTROL IN THE FULL RICH POSITION.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to ensure an adequate supply of fuel was aboard the aircraft during preflight planning and his failure to lean the engine mixture during cruise flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI95LA248
- Event ID
- 20001207X03918
- Case number
- CHI95LA248
- 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: f1d9a409aa2934cd0686a67674194f41744e5cd1548d8bf02acd67af8bb014c4; retrieved 2026-09-21T13:10:23.586Z.