MIA97LA096 · Cessna 182E
Cessna 182E · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during an emergency descent
From Enterprise Municipal Airport (EDN) to Bowman Field (LOU)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA97LA096
- 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 182E
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- N3392Y
- Operator
- Malcolm L.Higginbotham
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Enterprise Municipal Airport (EDN), Enterprise, ALTo Bowman Field (LOU), Louisville, KY
- 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
- Emergency descent
- 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
- Fluid, fuel › Undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight departed with full fuel tanks and about 30 minutes then 1 hour into the flight, the pilot repositioned the fuel selector. About 1 hour 50 minutes into the flight the engine sputtered. The pilot repositioned the fuel selector and engine power was restored then the pilot attempted to divert to a nearby airport. While descending the engine quit. After descending below the base of the clouds the pilot located a road and attempted a forced landing but the right wing collided with a fence. The airplane then impacted the road and came to rest upright. Post crash examination of the airplane revealed no fuel remaining in the fuel tanks with both fuel caps in place. Fuel leakage was not noted at the scene. Each fuel tank bladder was replaced within the preceding 6 years and the pilot replaced only the left fuel cap. Examination of the right fuel cap revealed that the seal was cracked. No abnormal wrinkles were noted in the fuel bladder cells and each bladder was secured by the top hangers.
Probable cause
Total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA97LA096
- Event ID
- 20001208X07596
- Case number
- MIA97LA096
- 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 1997-03-04.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 6c16c61ae18428c8db065e579f5ea3408dd5401a9f2241d48e1977d18e58501e; retrieved 2026-09-21T12:13:04.714Z.