FTW98LA177 · Cessna 182E
Cessna 182E · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Las Cruces International Airport (LRU) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98LA177
- 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 182E
- 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
- N3086Y
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Las Cruces International Airport (LRU), Las Cruces, NMTo 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)
- 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
- Fuel system, carburetor › Ice
- Pilot in command › Carburetor heat, improper use of
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said he made several turns in preparation to returning to the airport to perform some touch-and-go landings. At 6,500 feet msl, the engine lost power, and efforts to restore power were unsuccessful. The pilot attempted to land on a road, but the airplane struck a mesquite bush and nosed over. Later, the engine was functionally tested, and it operated normally. The pilot surmised that the engine had lost power due to carburetor ice. Thirty-four minutes before the accident, the temperature and dew point at El Paso International Airport (elevation 3,956 feet), located approximately 30 miles southeast, was 9 degrees and -3 degrees C. (48.2 and 26.6 degrees F.), respectively. According to the carburetor icing probability charts, these conditions were conducive to serious icing at glide power, and approached a moderate icing realm at cruise power.
Probable cause
the pilot's improper use of (or failure to use) carburetor heat, which resulted in carburetor ice, loss of engine power, and a forced landing. Related factors were: the carburetor icing (weather) conditions, and the lack of suitable terrain for a forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98LA177
- Event ID
- 20001211X09856
- Case number
- FTW98LA177
- 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: eb0466fd474eaef7f3daaa71f495bc4b4ede0e556619d621fcd4d298d5af38f9; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:52:23.776Z.