SEA97LA192 · Cessna 175
Cessna 175 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during initial climb
From S13 · WA to Seattle Paine Field International Airport (PAE)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA97LA192
- 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 175
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 175
- 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
- N7533M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From S13 · WATo Seattle Paine Field International Airport (PAE), Everett, WA
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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 › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that he checked the fuel tanks prior to taking off from a private airstrip, and that he observed 6.5 gal. in one tank, and 8.5 gal. in the other tank. He also stated that he was concerned about the fuel quantity, so he decided to fly to an airport that had fuel facilities. During the initial climb after the takeoff, the engine began to run rough. The pilot ditched the airplane in a lake. He stated that the fuel tank pick-up ports may have unported during the 'steep' climb. During the initial pilot interview after the event was upgraded from an incident to an accident, the pilot stated that he had destroyed all evidence that would be required to determine if fuel exhaustion or engine malfunction had occurred, and he did not provide requested information about refueling receipts. Examination of the pilot's logbooks revealed that the pilot had logged 5.1 hours of flight time in the accident airplane during the 4 flights previous to the accident flight. The log did not contain any reference to refueling or of any destination airports that have refueling facilities. Calculations revealed that the airplane would have consumed more than its 43 gallons of useable fuel during the 4 previous flights.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight planning and preparation, which led to fuel exhaustion and subsequent loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA97LA192
- Event ID
- 20001208X08751
- Case number
- SEA97LA192
- 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: f9a4953de9840114bf4cff528b80a6c86bbe98ef28a901f2f7f91fca7be14e22; retrieved 2026-09-22T18:48:53.513Z.