ANC97LA044 · Cessna 175
Cessna 175 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) on approach
From Naknek Airport (5NK) to Merrill Field (MRI)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC97LA044
- 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 175
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 175
- 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
- N9261B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Naknek Airport (5NK)To Merrill Field (MRI), Anchorage, 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 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
- Approach · VFR pattern downwind
- 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 › Refueling, not performed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he returned to his departure airport due to deteriorating weather conditions. He departed in daylight conditions, but returned to the unattended field at nightfall. He flew over the runway several times, and attempted to turn on the runway lights by tuning his radio to the published frequency to activate the lights, and clicking his microphone key several times. The lights did not come on, and while in the traffic pattern, the airplane's engine lost all power due to fuel exhaustion. The pilot said he was unable to glide to the runway, and landed in a vacant lot, causing substantial damage to the airplane. A review of the notices to airmen disclosed that the runway lights had been out of service for the preceding two months.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to refuel the airplane prior to fuel exhaustion. Factors associated with the accident were the pilot's inadequate preflight preparation and planning by failing to obtain information about the out of service runway lighting, and the rough and uneven terrain at the forced landing site.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC97LA044
- Event ID
- 20001208X07480
- Case number
- ANC97LA044
- 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 1997-04-01.
- API snapshot SHA-256: de27e963e47383510d51817029ddc000fc7d8ccc5a24bfb07b1dbae44c41160a; retrieved 2026-09-22T20:03:25.066Z.