ANC97LA077 · Cessna 180
Cessna 180 · Accident: loss of engine power while maneuvering
From 38A to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC97LA077
- 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 180
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 180
- 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
- N24EJ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 38ATo not recorded
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was conducting fish spotting flights in a remote area. He was circling to the left about 600 feet above the water when the engine coughed several times and then lost power. The pilot switched fuel tanks several times, but the engine did not restart. He landed (ditched) the airplane in the water about 50 yards from the beach. After touchdown, the airplane nosed over. The pilot reported the left fuel tank was indicating 1/3 and the right tank was near empty. After recovery, the left tank contained 15 gallons of fuel, and the right tank contained 5 gallons of fuel. The pilot estimated he still had 1 and 1/2 hours of fuel on board, and had operated the airplane with the fuel selector in the 'BOTH' position. The airplane's engine had accrued about 30 hours since being overhauled. An examination of the engine did not reveal any mechanical malfunction.
Probable cause
loss of engine power for undetermined reason(s).
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC97LA077
- Event ID
- 20001208X07843
- Case number
- ANC97LA077
- 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: c9909457e4d87bc53bbd46546f8515178d1e59ec08cefb47aa48ab957de5f182; retrieved 2026-09-22T19:37:37.118Z.