LAX99LA182 · Cessna T188C
Cessna T188C · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Echo Bay Airport (0L9) to Jean Airport (0L7)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX99LA182
- 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 T188C
- 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
- N9603J
- Operator
- Richard G. Snover · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Echo Bay Airport (0L9), OVERTON, NVTo Jean Airport (0L7), JEAN, NV
- 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 › Became lost/disoriented, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot/mechanic who overhauled the accident airplane engine was to remove it from the airplane, located on a highway in a remote desert area, to correct some discrepancies, which had caused the owner's pilot to make a precautionary landing. The mechanic chose to fly the airplane to another state where his shop is located. En route to a fuel source he landed on a road for directions. Subsequently, he arrived at the fuel source and had less than a gallon remaining. His next planned fuel stop was about 75 miles away. In the pilot's written statement he said he remembered noticing the fuel gauges reading low as he was flying low over sand dunes. The engine lost power, he turned on the boost pump, and the engine regained power momentarily. The aircraft then collided with sand dunes in the Death Valley National Park. The pilot reported that there were no mechanical problems with the airplane and he had run it out of fuel. The accident site is about 195 miles from the departure point on a heading about 90 degrees from the pilot's intended course line.
Probable cause
fuel exhaustion resulting from the pilot becoming lost and disoriented on a cross-country flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX99LA182
- Event ID
- 20001212X18811
- Case number
- LAX99LA182
- 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: d177135d626146fb61ef9f5a7533373390315bd06151615eaea75ebaf6f34de7; retrieved 2026-09-21T11:05:30.824Z.