LAX96LA029 · Cessna 177RG
Cessna 177RG · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From L12 · Redlands, CA to Modesto City Co-Harry Sham Field (MOD)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX96LA029
- 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 177RG
- 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
- N4110C
- Operator
- Dosung Kim
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From L12 · Redlands, CATo Modesto City Co-Harry Sham Field (MOD), Modesto, CA
- 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; 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
- Fluid, fuel › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command › Fuel supply, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he was in level cruise when the engine surged several times, then quit. The aircraft was headed toward the Madera airport; however, insufficient altitude remained to reach the runway. The pilot made a forced landing in an almond orchard. Records revealed that the pilot flew 5.6 hours during the trip from Modesto to Redlands and then to the accident site. Fueling records disclosed that the pilot purchased 12.6 gallons of 100LL aviation gasoline from Redlands Aviation just prior to departure. An examination revealed that the left fuel tank was compromised in the accident, but the right fuel tank was intact. The fuel selector was positioned to the right tank, which contained only residual fuel. No fuel was found in the fuel inlet line to the servo. No fuel was found in the distributor manifold. The engine starter drive was engaged into the starter ring. No engine discrepancies were found.
Probable cause
Fuel exhaustion due to the pilot's improper preflight planning and failure to ensure that adequate fuel was onboard to complete the flight. Darkness was a related factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX96LA029
- Event ID
- 20001207X04740
- Case number
- LAX96LA029
- 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 1995-10-30.
- API snapshot SHA-256: c6c11dfe2af0565aa00bdb5c20653857ac7d19bed07c25cd430ffc3497213a1e; retrieved 2026-09-21T22:01:11.196Z.