BFO91LA076 · Cessna A188B
Cessna A188B · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Cambridge Dorchester Airport (CGE) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- BFO91LA076
- 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 A188B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 188
- 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
- N8284G
- Operator
- Leroy Rawding
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cambridge Dorchester Airport (CGE), Cambridge, MDTo 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 137: Agricultural
- 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 supply, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PILOT SAID THAT THE ENGINE LOST POWER DURING CRUISE FLIGHT AS HE WAS RETURNING FROM AN AERIAL APPLICATION. HE STATED THAT HIS FUEL GAGES WERE NOT OPERATIVE, AND DURING THE PREFLIGHT, HE ESTIMATED THAT HE HAD ABOUT 1.5 HOURS OF FUEL ABOARD. HE SAID THE FLIGHT LASTED ABOUT 50 MINUTES. THE AIRCRAFT WAS LANDED IN A FIELD WHERE IT COLLIDED WITH A DITCH AND WAS DAMAGED. THE PILOT STATED THAT THE ACCIDENT COULD HAVE BEEN PREVENTED IF HE HAD BEEN MORE CAREFUL IN CHECKING THE FUEL TANKS AND REFUELING AFTER EACH TRIP. EXAMINATION OF THE AIRCRAFT REVEALED THE FUEL TANKS WERE EMPTY.
Probable cause
INADEQUATE PREFLIGHT BY THE PILOT, WHICH RESULTED IN FUEL EXHAUSTION DUE TO AN INADEQUATE SUPPLY OF FUEL. A FACTOR RELATED TO THE ACCIDENT WAS: THE INOPERATIVE FUEL QUANTITY GAGES.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record BFO91LA076
- Event ID
- 20001212X17784
- Case number
- BFO91LA076
- 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 UTC date the NTSB stores; the local time zone is not recorded, so the local date may differ by a day.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 25fc9196abfdde92ab802970ffb82943f52efb998cec5d60295bbc02f174276b; retrieved 2026-09-23T03:45:24.216Z.