Lake Clark Air Cessna 180 accident
Cessna 180 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From MULCHATNA RIVER, AK to 5NW · AK
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC96LA134
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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 180
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 180
- 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
- N8241V
- Operator
- Lake Clark Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From MULCHATNA RIVER, AKTo 5NW · AK
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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 › Starvation
- Pilot in command › Aircraft preflight, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot had landed at a field site to pick up two passengers. After the landing, he drained the fuel from the left fuel tank to store for future use. The operator stated this is their normal practice, and as a result, operate the airplanes with the fuel selector valve in the right fuel tank position. When the airplane was approximately 5 minutes from the destination, the engine stopped producing power. The airplane landed and nosed over. Subsequent examination showed that the right fuel tank contained 7.3 gallons of usable fuel and the left fuel tank contained 3.1 gallons of usable fuel. The engine was started and it operated normally. The passengers stated the pilot did not dip the fuel tank prior to departure and that the return flight was turbulent.
Probable cause
The fuel starvation caused by the unporting of the right fuel tank, and the pilot's inadequate preflight by not dipping the fuel tank to ensure sufficient fuel quantity to prevent the unporting.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC96LA134
- Event ID
- 20001208X06409
- Case number
- ANC96LA134
- 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: d156d6556ec66cd8215ce7032a176f10ad2d7090a364253cc405fb5e9228c7ba; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:47:04.450Z.