CHI98FA048 · Cessna 172E
Cessna 172E · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Lawrence Municipal Airport (LWC) to Salina Municipal Airport (SLN)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI98FA048
- 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
- 1 · 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 172E
- 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
- N5332T
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lawrence Municipal Airport (LWC), Lawrence, KSTo Salina Municipal Airport (SLN), Salina, KS
- 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
- Wire, transmission
- 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
- Pilot in command › Carburetor heat, improper use of
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a cross-country flight, the Cessna 172's Continental O-300D engine began to run rough. The pilot applied carburetor heat which improved engine performance. After a second recurrence, he then made a precautionary landing to check the airplane and found nothing unusual. He decided to continue the flight using partial carburetor heat. He resumed the flight and, according to the surviving passenger, said he would continue with the 'carburetor heat on one-quarter way.' Shortly thereafter, the engine again began to run rough. The pilot was unable to correct for the condition and eventually the engine suffered a loss of all power. A forced landing was initiated under dark night conditions. During the final phase of the descent, the airplane impacted a transmission line and then terrain. Subsequent examination of the airplane, and a successful test run of the engine failed to reveal any mechanical anomalies other than those associated with the impact with the wire and the terrain. FAA Advisory Circular AC 20-113 dated October 22, 1981, states in part under the title 'In-flight Winter Weather Conditions,' and the sub title, 'Prevention Procedures'... 'When no carburetor air or mixture temperature instrumentation is available, the general practice with smaller engines should be to use full heat whenever carburetor heat is applied.'
Probable cause
the pilot's improper use of carburetor heat. Contributing factors were carburetor icing conditions, dark night conditions, and the transmission wire.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI98FA048
- Event ID
- 20001208X09140
- Case number
- CHI98FA048
- 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: b204f253b58624d1c0bcf8495c1fb22a13873cd15c6b82d9783f3cc49e07653f; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:45:11.218Z.