LAX97LA168 · Cessna T182
Cessna T182 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Chiriaco Summit Airport (L77) to French Valley Airport (F70)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX97LA168
- 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 T182
- 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
- N5482N
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chiriaco Summit Airport (L77), CHIRIACO SUMMIT, CATo French Valley Airport (F70), FRENCH VALLEY, CA
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Fluid, fuel › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command › Aircraft preflight, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Fuel consumption calculations, not performed
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Hemet, CA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The engine lost power during cruise flight, and the airplane was destroyed during the subsequent forced landing. During the investigation of the airframe and engine, no fuel was found in either aircraft wing tank, the fuel feed line to the engine, or the fuel filter bowl. No other preevent malfunctions or abnormalities were discovered in either the airframe or the engine. During his preflight inspection, the pilot stated that the cockpit fuel gauges did not agree with the amount of fuel he saw when he visually checked the fuel tanks for quantity. However, he did not dip check the tanks to verify the amount of fuel onboard. Available aircraft and fueling records indicated that at the time of the accident the aircraft had been flown for 5.3 hours since last refueled, with four takeoffs and landings accomplished. The pilot's handbook for the aircraft states a maximum endurance of 5.5 hours with one takeoff and landing included.
Probable cause
the pilot's decision not to dip check the aircraft fuel tanks after he had noted a disagreement between the cockpit fuel gages and what he had observed visually in the fuel tanks, and his failure to accomplish in-flight endurance calculations based on aircraft handbook performance data, which led to the engine power loss due to fuel exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX97LA168
- Event ID
- 20001208X07762
- Case number
- LAX97LA168
- 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: 1f63c539e636084e9e768691e9657c7ebe8444350fed322bb0b9548288d73e80; retrieved 2026-09-21T12:08:58.765Z.