IAD96LA056 · Cessna 172E
Cessna 172E · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Flying W Airport (N14) to Virginia Tech Montgomery Executive Airport (BCB)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD96LA056
- 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 172E
- 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
- N5730T
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Flying W Airport (N14), Lumberton, NJTo Virginia Tech Montgomery Executive Airport (BCB), Blacksburg, VA
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Fuel supply, misjudged
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Roanoke, VA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that during his preflight inspection of the airplane he visually inspected the fuel tanks and they appeared to be full. Approximately 10 minutes from the Roanoke Airport, the pilot noted that the fuel quantity gauges indicated about 1/4 tank of fuel. He contacted Roanoke ATC, advised them he was low on fuel, and proceeded inbound to land. Shortly thereafter, the engine began to sputter, then completely lost power. The pilot performed a forced landing, but '...[when the] main wheels hit the soft turf, the nose wheel dug into the ground and we flipped over.' Postaccident examination revealed no evidence of fuel present in the fuel tanks or the area surrounding the accident site. The pilot stated that, although he had requested that the airplane be 'topped off' with fuel before his flight, another pilot had flown for 1.6 hours since the airplane was refueled. He stated that he should have used a more precise method to measure fuel quantity before he departed.
Probable cause
the pilot's misjudged estimation of the airplane's fuel supply for the flight. Related factors are the inadequate preflight inspection, the pilot's expectation that the airplane had been topped off, and the soft terrain encountered during the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD96LA056
- Event ID
- 20001208X05583
- Case number
- IAD96LA056
- 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: 32d8e53a14fd18241323daebde0541af8a0e86b003a1d52e57e61e498d4d13cf; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:56:03.166Z.