ANC97LA065 · Cessna U206F
Cessna U206F · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From MONTAGUE ISLAND, AK to Merrill Field (MRI)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC97LA065
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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 U206F
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 206
- 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
- N14C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From MONTAGUE ISLAND, AKTo 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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 · 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 starvation; Tree(s)
- 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 › Starvation
- Pilot in command › Fuel management, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Fuel tank selector position, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported he was starting a descent to his destination airport when the engine began to lose power. He said he was unable to restart the engine, and made a forced landing into trees. The pilot related he had been flying the airplane with the left fuel tank selected, and he didn't recall if he switched to the right tank during the emergency descent. A passenger seated in the right front seat stated the left fuel gauge was indicating empty, and that the right tank fuel gauge was indicating full. He said the fuel selector was on the left tank, and when he told the pilot he should switch fuel tanks, the pilot reportedly told him to 'relax.' The passenger stated that the pilot did not switch tanks. Postaccident inspection disclosed the left fuel tank contained an unusable quantity of fuel, and the right tank was full. The airplane's engine was removed from the airplane, as well as the electric fuel boost pump. The engine was started and ran on a test stand without any observed mechanical anomalies. The fuel pump was also tested and found functional.
Probable cause
a loss of engine power resulting from fuel starvation due to the pilot's improper positioning of the fuel selector, and the pilot's failure to identify and correct the deficiency during the ensuing emergency descent.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC97LA065
- Event ID
- 20001208X07835
- Case number
- ANC97LA065
- 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: 484451315c04c16a4c599cc4b0878e7e5a8d9009dd8ff8d53a577920cf40ee25; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:35:59.086Z.