IAD96LA123 · Cessna 172 RG
Cessna 172 RG · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Gordonsville Municipal Airport (GVE) to Saxtons River, VT
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD96LA123
- 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 RG
- 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
- N6169R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Gordonsville Municipal Airport (GVE), Gordonsville, VATo Saxtons River, VT
- 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that while in cruise flight at approximately 3500 feet, '...the engine lost power, propeller continued to windmill. All seemed normal except no power.' The pilot stated that he used his Global Positioning System receiver to look for an airport within gliding distance and found none. He said he notified air traffic control and '...picked wheat stubble field to land. We were low and had to avoid a tree - swung too wide and came down in corn which turned out to be 10 to 12 ft tall. It was a hard landing. Nose wheel broke off. Left landing gear broke. Came to rest with left wing tip on ground.' During a postaccident examination, the engine was visually inspected, and a run-up was conducted. The engine would only run when the mixture control was in an excessively lean position. The carburetor was flow checked and the results were within specification. An inspection of the carburetor did not reveal a mechanical discrepancy.
Probable cause
loss of engine power for undetermined reason(s).
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD96LA123
- Event ID
- 20001208X06268
- Case number
- IAD96LA123
- 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: 132625d8583e846dd5ad750dbdb276ca9eef7704406b1eabfabc53692aa4a09c; retrieved 2026-09-22T21:44:42.427Z.