LAX97LA184 · Cessna 182G
Cessna 182G · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Brown Field Municipal Airport (SDM) to L66 · CA
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX97LA184
- 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 182G
- 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
- N3165S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Brown Field Municipal Airport (SDM), San Diego, CATo L66 · 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Fluid, fuel › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command › Fuel consumption calculations, not performed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Upon arrival in the destination area, the pilot was unable to identify his intended airport because of low clouds and haze. He decided to check the weather at the some other airports in the area, but after he had flown a few miles, his engine began to sputter. He switched his fuel selector and rocked the wings but the engine stopped completely within a few moments. The pilot stated that he had been flying by pilotage and dead reckoning and did not have any onboard navigation equipment. He had neither estimated his time en route nor performed any over the ground speed checks. An inspection revealed both tanks contained only residual fuel. The pilot was unable to produce a fuel receipt for his last fuel purchase. There was no pilot operator's handbook (POH) onboard the aircraft and the pilot had not performed any fuel consumption calculations.
Probable cause
fuel exhaustion due to the pilot's failure to perform either preflight or en route fuel consumption calculations. The pilot's decision to fly the aircraft without the required pilot's operating handbook (POH) on board was a factor in this accident.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX97LA184
- Event ID
- 20001208X07953
- Case number
- LAX97LA184
- 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: 64da77ebd487530257cc754d74c69938239afa9357b3f7f0c18e49b459af1960; retrieved 2026-09-22T19:39:15.572Z.