IAD97LA053 · Cessna 175
Shenandoah FLT SVC Cessna 175 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) on approach
From Morristown Municipal Airport (MMU) to Shenandoah Valley Regional Airport (SHD)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD97LA053
- 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
- N9485B
- Operator
- Shenandoah FLT SVC
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Morristown Municipal Airport (MMU), Morristown, NJTo Shenandoah Valley Regional Airport (SHD), 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
- Approach
- 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, inaccurate
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After refueling the airplane with 43.1 gallons of fuel, the pilot departed at 1645, for the return cross-country flight. Twenty miles from his destination, the engine began running rough. The pilot applied carburetor heat, and the situation remedied itself. Shortly thereafter, at 2012, the engine stopped completely. The airplane impacted the terrain in a partially wooded field about 3 miles north of his destination. Minimum (residual) fuel was found during a post-accident examination of the airplane. A Federal Aviation Administration Inspector stated that there were no signs of fuel stains on the wreckage to indicate that fuel was leaking from the fuel tanks, or from elsewhere. The pilot stated that he had 52 gallons of fuel for flight planning purposes. The Cessna owner's manual indicates the total fuel capacity was 52 gallons, with 43 gallons usable. The cruise performance chart in the owner's manual indicated that at 5,000 feet altitude with a 72% power setting and the mixture rich, the engine would use 12.3 gallons of fuel per hour, with an endurance time of 3.5 hours.
Probable cause
the pilot's inadequate preflight planning/preparation, and inaccurate fuel calculations, which resulted in fuel exhaustion, loss of engine power, and a forced landing. Darkness and high vegetation in the forced landing area were related factors.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD97LA053
- Event ID
- 20001208X07560
- Case number
- IAD97LA053
- 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 1997-03-10.
- API snapshot SHA-256: e3ad89b27c0014180d8158d239e979fa1e14221a43f0cad32dd8519acfb3d969; retrieved 2026-09-22T20:14:37.054Z.