IAD96LA043 · Cessna 177A
Cessna 177A · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Lima Allen County Airport (AOH) to I12 · OH
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD96LA043
- 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 177A
- 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
- N30422
- Operator
- Jeffrey Meckstroth
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lima Allen County Airport (AOH), Lima, OHTo I12 · OH
- 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 contamination
- 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 › Contamination
- Pilot in command › Aircraft preflight, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that the airplane was in cruise flight at 3000 feet MSL, when the engine began to sputter, then lost power. The pilot stated that he applied carburetor heat, switched fuel tanks, and turned on the fuel boost pumps, but all restart attempts were unsuccessful. He made a forced landing in a rough field, and the airplane was damaged during the landing roll. Postaccident examination revealed evidence of fuel contamination. A brown colored substance was found in the fuel sump drain. The engine was test run using auxiliary fuel and auxiliary electrical power. During the test run, the engine ran smoothly with no indication of a malfunction.
Probable cause
fuel contamination, and the pilot's inadequate preflight inspection, which resulted in subsequent loss of engine power during cruise flight. A factor relating to the accident was: rough terrain in the emergency landing area.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD96LA043
- Event ID
- 20001208X05267
- Case number
- IAD96LA043
- 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 1996-02-17.
- API snapshot SHA-256: be6d09d7358aab36a7993c4d17b94541fa78f3cf491b2240cbabccc46f8ac63d; retrieved 2026-09-22T22:49:08.574Z.