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MIA99LA060 · Cessna 177

28 Dec 1998 · Immokalee, FL, United States

Cessna 177 · Accident: loss of engine power during initial climb

From Naples Municipal Airport (APF) to Immokalee Regional Airport (IMM)

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Event

NTSB case
MIA99LA060
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 177

Aircraft type
Cessna 177
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
N3293T
Operator
Unknown
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Naples Municipal Airport (APF)To Immokalee Regional Airport (IMM)
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

  • Pilot in command(cfi) › Supervision, inadequate

Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Immokalee, FL, the place the record names. Not the accident site.

NTSB narrative

The student pilot initiated a touch and go after landing. The airplane was slow to accelerate. The flight instructor took over the flight controls. He ensured the carburetor heat was off and raised the flaps up to 20-degrees. He rotated the airplane about half way down the runway, and raised the flaps to 10-degrees. He adjusted the airplane to climb attitude upon reaching 60 mph, and raised the flaps to the full up position. The airplane reached about 50 feet, and started to lose power in a high sink rate. The CFI applied aft pressure on the control yoke to maintain a nose high attitude. The airplane collided with the ground off the end of the runway very hard. The right main landing gear separated, and the airplane came to a stop. Law enforcement personnel checked the fuel levels by turning on the master switch. The left fuel tank registered no fuel, and the right fuel tank showed about an eighth of a tank of fuel. An Airframe and Powerplant mechanic drained the fuel tanks to determine the remaining fuel quantity. About 2 gallons of fuel was remaining. The total fuel capacity is 49 gallons. The flight manual states useable fuel in each bay for all flight conditions is 24 gallons when completely filled.

Probable cause

The certified flight instructor's inadequate supervision and his inadequate management of the fuel, which resulted in fuel exhaustion.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record MIA99LA060
Event ID
20001211X11611
Case number
MIA99LA060
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: 9ffd04100a93f9c177d0751ed4ea5af52f8ca73248464b692a98c91a787b802e; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:37:50.462Z.