LAX97LA316 · Cessna 182B
Cessna 182B · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Madera Municipal Airport (MAE) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX97LA316
- 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 182B
- 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
- N81MK
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Madera Municipal Airport (MAE)To 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 · 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 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
The pilot descended to land after a paradrop. Entering downwind, he cleared the engine, moved the mixture control to full rich, and applied carburetor heat. Being above traffic pattern altitude he extended his downwind. Upon reaching his base leg, he attempted to add power but the engine failed to respond. He switched tanks from both to the right and finally to the left. When the engine continued windmilling he executed a forced landing. The aircraft touched down perpendicular to the rows of the cotton field and nosed over. About 1 gallon of fuel was found in the right tank and 3 gallons found in the left. The aircraft had flown 1.6 hours since being last fueled with 19 gallons. The total fuel onboard after refueling is unknown. The engine manufacturer estimated that engine would consumed about 19 gallons during this period. The aircraft manufacturer stated that there are 1.5 gallons of unusable fuel in each tank. The carburetor icing probability chart, shows that carburetor icing was possible at glide and cruise power.
Probable cause
fuel exhaustion due to the pilot's failure to compute the fuel required and the fuel available. The pilot's decision to extend his downwind beyond gliding distance of the runway after entering the traffic pattern was a factor in this accident.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX97LA316
- Event ID
- 20001208X08880
- Case number
- LAX97LA316
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1997-09-07.
- API snapshot SHA-256: abaf896919586938c6c1586d361ea941395c0f14b553f6a16b4caf7b3318e965; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:10:25.732Z.