FTW96LA033 · Cessna 172
Cessna 172 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From OKC Will Rogers World Airport (OKC) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW96LA033
- 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
- N6364E
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From OKC Will Rogers World Airport (OKC), OKTo 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
- 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)
- 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
- Fuel system, carburetor › Ice
- Pilot in command › Carburetor heat, improper use of
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot took off, with full fuel in the left tank and 1/4 fuel in the right tank, to practice touch-and-go landings at a nearby airport. He was returning to Will Rogers World Airport approximately 1 hour later when the engine 'quit' approximately 5 miles west of the destination. He reports that he flew the whole flight with the fuel selector on the left fuel tank. He restarted the engine, but it 'quit' again about 1 mile west of runway 35L. The pilot further stated that he never used carburetor heat. During the landing roll in a field, the airplane hit a 'small gully,' nosed over, and came to rest in the inverted position. According to the carburetor icing probability chart the weather conditions at the time of the accident were conducive to the formation of carburetor ice. Additionally, the engine was test run and found to have no mechanical anomalies. Repeated attempts to obtain a completed Pilot/Operator Report of the accident from the student pilot were unsuccessful.
Probable cause
The student pilot's failure to use carburetor heat resulting in loss of engine power due to carburetor icing. A factor was the lack of suitable terrain for a forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW96LA033
- Event ID
- 20001207X04843
- Case number
- FTW96LA033
- 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: 778e697b1ff76fe59275bfb5ad9f1c5142a7063626aa9d51cf29c1130a2e4880; retrieved 2026-09-22T23:04:48.603Z.