CHI95LA281 · Cessna 172
Cessna 172 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) on approach
From Carmi Municipal Airport (CUL) to Chicago Executive Airport (PWK)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI95LA281
- 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
- N6146E
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Carmi Municipal Airport (CUL), Carmi, ILTo Chicago Executive Airport (PWK)
- 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 exhaustion; Stall; Tree(s)
- 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 › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Stall, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was observed by a flight instructor 'wallowing around' on final approach. He said the airplane stalled when it was about 80 feet above the ground. He said the airplane collided with trees during its uncontrolled descent following the stall. The witness said the propeller was not rotating and the airplane had 20 degrees of flaps extended. The pilot said the engine ran rough for a few moments when he was on final approach. He said it stopped running when he applied carburetor heat. The pilot said he had flown about 4 hours and 5 minutes after departing with full fuel tanks. Inspection of the airplane revealed the fuel tanks were empty. No fuel was found on the ground surrounding the airplane. Endurance for the airplane with full fuel ranges between 3.9 and 4.4 hours, depending upon the mixture setting.
Probable cause
inadequate preflight planning and preparation by the pilot and an inadverent stall encountered by the pilot.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI95LA281
- Event ID
- 20001207X04206
- Case number
- CHI95LA281
- 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: 316fd8d4724733b91366c74dab5bccc0a767c2759f46c4266de4271405f1ad25; retrieved 2026-09-22T23:24:45.903Z.