FTW97LA106 · Cessna 172
Cessna 172 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Paxton Airport (1C1) to Bentonville Municipal-Louise M Thaden Field (VBT)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW97LA106
- 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
- N1419Y
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Paxton Airport (1C1), Paxton, ILTo Bentonville Municipal-Louise M Thaden Field (VBT), Bentonville, AR
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Fluid, fuel › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command › Fuel consumption calculations, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, he intended to perform a cross-country flight from Paxton, Illinois, to Longview, Texas, with a refueling stop at Bentonville, Arkansas. After 4 hours and 5 minutes of flight, the airplane, 'ran out of fuel over Rogers, Arkansas, approximately 8 miles from Bentonville.' Rogers airport was within gliding distance, but once the airplane got closer to the airport, the pilot did not think that the airplane would be able to 'clear the trees that paralleled the runway to the east so I chose a course to the north where a clearing was.' He then 'discovered the runway was built up on a hill which I could not distinguish from the air.' Rather than risk impacting the crest of the hill, he landed on the side of the hill running 'parallel to the horizontal run of the hill.' During the landing roll, as the airplane rounded the ridge at the west end of the hill, it impacted a drainage ditch. A fuel sample was taken at the accident site, and approximately 1/2 quart of fuel was drained from each fuel tank. According to the 1962 Cessna 172 owner's manual, the range with full fuel (39 useable gallons), at 7,000 feet and 75% power was 4 hours and 6 minutes, with no reserve.
Probable cause
the pilot's improper fuel consumption calculations, which resulted in the loss of engine power, due to fuel exhaustion. A factor relating to the accident was: the lack of suitable terrain for a forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW97LA106
- Event ID
- 20001208X07404
- Case number
- FTW97LA106
- 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: 347c98bd9db72521438df0384cc57dd6e0866ee50d981b0dbdc67e415a4ce4e2; retrieved 2026-09-21T12:13:45.226Z.