LAX99LA256 · Cessna 172E
Cessna 172E · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From L12 · Redlands, CA to Hayward Executive Airport (HWD)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX99LA256
- 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 172E
- 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
- N5784T
- Operator
- Andy Testman
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From L12 · Redlands, CATo Hayward Executive Airport (HWD), Hayward, CA
- 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
- 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
- Fluid, fuel › Exhaustion
- Object › Sign
- Pilot in command › Fuel consumption calculations, inadequate
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot made a forced landing on an interstate highway following a loss of engine power. His destination was overcast with thick clouds so he flew inland and descended to a low altitude to get under them. He turned back toward his destination airport. The airplane was level at 1,500 feet under the overcast about 10 miles north of his destination when the engine power went to zero. The engine restarted and stopped two more times. He setup to land on the highway. He thought he might hit a car, so he pulled the nose up into a full stall. The airplane hit hard; the right wing hit a road sign and spun the airplane into a fence. The pilot had planned about 3 hours en route; actual flight time was 3 hours 40 minutes. Recovery personnel drained no fuel from the right tank and 2 drops of fuel from the left tank. They drained less than 3 ounces from the fuel sump. During a follow-up inspection, investigators supplied the engine with fuel. The engine started and they completed normal run-up checks of the magnetos and propeller. They ran the engine to full power without discovering any discrepancies. The airplane had been modified so that the original 145 horsepower Continental engine had been replaced with a 180 horsepower Textron Lycoming engine with a constant speed propeller. The FAA accident coordinator looked onboard the airplane, but did not find any supplements or changes to the airplane flight manual regarding this engine modification.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate in-flight planning and inadequate fuel consumption calculations, resulting in a total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion. Factors were the pilot's failure to have all appropriate flight manuals aboard the airplane and the low cloud ceilings.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX99LA256
- Event ID
- 20001212X19305
- Case number
- LAX99LA256
- 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: 83e27816fc290cf7b17a216e4fd42caf0643d6ff36093e87d1d81d87c63e81e0; retrieved 2026-09-22T14:23:44.759Z.