SEA97LA166 · Cessna 172I
Cessna 172I · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Yakima Air Terminal McAllister Field (YKM) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA97LA166
- 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 172I
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- 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
- N35436
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Yakima Air Terminal McAllister Field (YKM), Yakima, WATo 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
- 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 › Aircraft preflight, inadequate
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Naches, WA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that during a preflight on 7/11/97, she checked the aircraft's fuel quantity using a dip stick, but was interrupted and had to begin again. She reported the left tank was '1 inch down,' and right tank was 'full.' The aircraft was operated on the ground for 10 to 15 minutes at 1,000 RPM before taking off from the Yakima Airport, which was logged at 0832. At 0949, Yakima Tower received a radio transmission from the aircraft indicating a power loss. Subsequently, the pilot executed a forced landing onto soft terrain. During the landing, the nose gear collapsed, and the aircraft nosed over. An FAA onsite examination revealed no evidence of fuel in the left tank and about one cup in the right tank. No evidence of fuel spillage was noted at the site, and no evidence of any fuel leakage from the fuel system was found. The pilot stated that on the evening before the flight, she contacted the fixed base operator (FBO) to have the aircraft serviced with fuel. FAA examination of FBO documentation revealed no record of the aircraft having been refueled since June 14th. The aircraft had been flown approximately 2.5 hours on the day before the accident. The aircraft's total usable fuel capacity was 38 gallons. Estimated fuel consumption of the aircraft was 6.0 to 9.7 gallons/hour.
Probable cause
inadequate preflight by the pilot, and subsequent fuel exhaustion, which led to a forced landing and subsequent nose over of the aircraft. Related factors were: the FBO did not refuel the aircraft as requested, and soft terrain was encountered during the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA97LA166
- Event ID
- 20001208X08508
- Case number
- SEA97LA166
- 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: 049348742936d65337166eadcb9acc3edb8e613bb27056cac3ea7ca2d09339fc; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:21:17.419Z.