NYC98LA195 · Cessna 172D
Cessna 172D · Accident: loss of engine power during initial climb
From Bowman Field (LOU) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC98LA195
- 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 172D
- 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
- N2482U
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bowman Field (LOU)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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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 › Aircraft preflight, not performed
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Supervision, inadequate
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Louisville, KY, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot preflighted the airplane and visually noted that the fuel tanks were about 1/4 to 3/8 full. He then departed with a certified flight instructor (CFI) for a 45 minute instructional flight. After the flight, the CFI authorized the SP to perform his first solo flight and they both exited the airplane to complete some paper work. The SP then went back to the airplane and departed while the instructor observed. The SP did not perform a preflight check of the airplane before the solo flight. During the initial climb, after the SP's first touch and go landing, the airplane's engine sputtered and lost power. The airplane touched back down onto the runway and ran off the end of the and impacted a fence. Examination of the wreckage revealed the fuel tank caps were in place and the fuel tanks were 'empty.' The airplane had flown for 5.1 hours since being topped off. According to the airplane's operating manual, the airplane's total fuel capacity was 42 gallons, of which 41 were usable. The CFI stated, the average fuel consumption for the airplane was 8 gallons per hour.
Probable cause
The student pilot's failure to perform a preflight inspection of the airplane before his first solo flight, and inadequate supervision by the certified flight instructor, which resulted in fuel exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC98LA195
- Event ID
- 20001211X11160
- Case number
- NYC98LA195
- 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: 369f86626791221b823cb70a54d99aefbc29c04b1e229b18c791ea2052abbf34; retrieved 2026-09-22T16:44:42.166Z.