FTW99LA133 · Cessna 172M
Cessna 172M · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during initial climb
From Lengbati Airport (LNC) to Terrell Municipal Airport (TRL)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW99LA133
- 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 172M
- 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
- N101PD
- Operator
- Marvin E. Scott · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lengbati Airport (LNC)To Terrell Municipal Airport (TRL), Terrell, TX
- 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
- 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 › Aircraft preflight, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot executed a forced landing after the engine lost power during takeoff climb. The airplane landed hard and nosed over. The pilot and both passengers stated that the pilot 'checked the gas' prior to the flight. During takeoff climb, the engine began to 'spit and sputter' and then 'stopped.' A witness stated that 'the airplane accelerated downward (no forward airspeed or groundspeed) [and] struck [the] ground in [a] level attitude and bounced inverted.' The FAA inspector, who was at the airport at the time of the accident, stated that he could neither smell nor see any evidence of fuel at the accident site. The inspector visually examined the fuel tanks and found them to be dry. The most recent fuel purchase was made on March 23, 1999, when the pilot topped off the tanks with 18 gallons of fuel. According to the pilot's logbook, the engine had operated for about 75 minutes since this last refueling. The NTSB IIC and the FAA inspector test ran the engine for 14 minutes at various power settings. No anomalies were noted during the engine test run.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight inspection which resulted in fuel exhaustion and the subsequent total loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW99LA133
- Event ID
- 20001212X18768
- Case number
- FTW99LA133
- 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: 589ddc9e67b1af23587c597ba95821404a61fd1af6e5b14e2359590e3960077e; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:32:45.886Z.