IAD98LA063 · Cessna 175
Cessna 175 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From LAKE HINKLEY, NY (no airport) to Philadelphia Seaplane Base (9N2)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD98LA063
- 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
- N6577E
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From LAKE HINKLEY, NY (no airport)To Philadelphia Seaplane Base (9N2), ESSINGTON, PA
- 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 › Fuel consumption calculations, inadequate
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Pemberton, NJ, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he added 20 gallons of fuel, prior to his departure, which brought the total fuel onboard between 45 and 48 gallons. He purchased this fuel at a local airport and transported it to his airplane at the lake, since no fueling services were available at Lake Hinkley. The pilot estimated the flight would take him about 2 1/2 hours to complete. About 2 hours after his departure, the engine lost power, and the pilot 'landed the airplane in a corn field, out of fuel.' He stated that he had no mechanical problems with the airplane, and that the fuel gages gradually decreased during the flight; however, he 'would not rely on the fuel gages in a forty year old airplane.' Examination of the airplane revealed that both fuel tanks were intact and empty. According to a representative of the engine's manufacturer, the fuel consumption for the model engine was 8 to 10 gallons per hour. The pilot reported 250 hours of total flight experience, 10 hours of which were in the make and model of the accident airplane.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate fuel consumption calculations and his improper in-flight decision to continue flying with an inadequate fuel supply.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD98LA063
- Event ID
- 20001211X10112
- Case number
- IAD98LA063
- 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: 83990a9a4470652a093d8c26be37ba787bbee0247231869bdb64aba6919f9bb5; retrieved 2026-09-22T17:44:44.010Z.