LAX98LA269 · Cessna 172N
Cessna 172N · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From North Las Vegas Airport (VGT) to E14 · Tucson, AZ
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX98LA269
- 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 172N
- 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
- N5233D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From North Las Vegas Airport (VGT), North Las Vegas, NVTo E14 · Tucson, AZ
- 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, not performed
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot told the tower that she was running out of fuel. She reported that the aircraft shook and started losing altitude, then seemed to start back up before quitting completely. The pilot landed in the desert terrain and the nose gear and left main landing gear were ripped off. The aircraft nosed over and came to rest inverted. An FAA inspector examined the airplane and reported that the fuel lines and both fuel tanks were intact and there was no fuel visible in either tank. He further stated that he conducted an engine run after adding approximately 1 gallon of fuel and making no other adjustments. The engine started on the first try and ran smoothly for several minutes with no abnormal sounds or indications noted. On the flight from Tucson to Las Vegas, 40.7 gallons of fuel were added to the aircraft tanks following landing at North Las Vegas. The fuel system holds 43 total gallons, of which 40.7 are usable.
Probable cause
Fuel exhaustion due to the pilot's inadequate preflight planning and in-flight monitoring of the aircraft's fuel consumption.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX98LA269
- Event ID
- 20001211X10901
- Case number
- LAX98LA269
- 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: 9f487f9846aa24fceecf5ff9e9881a79c5a44ea61ba327c871e4f10f7fb53808; retrieved 2026-09-22T17:04:36.967Z.