MIA99LA192 · Cessna 182Q
Cessna 182Q · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Asheville Regional Airport (AVL) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA99LA192
- 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 182Q
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- N4784N
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Asheville Regional Airport (AVL), Asheville, NCTo 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
- En route · climb to 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
- 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; Wire, static; Tree(s)
- 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
- Dual student › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
- Fluid, fuel › Exhaustion
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the certified flight instructor (CFI), and the pilot receiving instruction (PRI), while climbing through 4,500 feet Mean Sea Level, the engine started to run rough. Carburetor heat was added and, "...the engine smoothed out for a few seconds, but then the engine quit altogether ...we went thru the engine-out checklist in an effort to get a restart, never thinking we had run out of fuel...we noted the right fuel gauge reading empty. The left gauge...read about 1/2 to 2/3 full." The PRI selected a field as a forced landing area and they headed for it. The CFI did not like the area and headed for a road. They were both aware of the wires that crossed the road, and ran parallel to the road. The PRI relinquished the controls to the CFI. The CFI maneuvered the airplane between the wires. The right wing tip hit the wires, and the airplane was deflected to the right. The right wing tip hit a pine tree, and the airplane hit the ground collapsing the nose gear and the main gear. According to the CFI, the PRI had preflighted the airplane's fuel system by dipping his finger into the fuel cell. He then used a dip-stick provided in the airplane for a more accurate assessment. The PRI stated that after he checked the fuel tanks, he told the CFI that the airplane was topped off. The CFI did not confirm this. After the accident the CFI found out that the PRI had used the wrong dipstick which had been provided by Asheville Jet Center. The FAA inspector stated in his statement that the airplane was last refueled by the Jet Center on June 26, 1999. A renter who flew the airplane for 6.5 hours said he added 10 gallons of fuel on June 27. 1999. Asheville Jet Center stated that they had no record of the airplane being refueled between June 27, 1999, and the accident flight on June 30. Examination of the fuel system revealed no fuel in the right fuel tank. The left wing tank inspection panel was removed and about one pint of fuel was present. Both fuel caps were on firmly. Both fuel tanks maintained their structural integrity. There was no evidence that fuel had vented overboard. Fuel was present in the fuel strainer and in the fuel line from the engine to just above the strainer. The CFI also verified that no fuel was present in the tanks. He also stated that before takeoff he looked at the fuel gauges and they were somewhere between 1/3 and full.
Probable cause
**This report was modified on 2/24/2016. Refer to the public docket for this accident for additional information.**
Inadequate preflight by the commercial pilot/CFI receiving instruction resulting in an in-flight loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA99LA192
- Event ID
- 20001212X19077
- Case number
- MIA99LA192
- 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: 0535169a3886f62557605e3b6cba5b96cd32c7eb6c8c1d502f02003b7fd2346f; retrieved 2026-09-22T14:42:44.501Z.