DEN99LA164 · Cessna 180
Cessna 180 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Laughlin Bullhead International Airport (IFP) to 60E
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN99LA164
- 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 180
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 180
- 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
- N4796B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Laughlin Bullhead International Airport (IFP), Bullhead City, AZTo 60E
- 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 · descent
- 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 › Instructions, written/verbal, poor
- Refueling › Inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot departed Bullhead City, Arizona, en route to Columbus, New Mexico, a distance of 461 nautical miles. He planned on an average ground speed of 120 knots, with an estimated 3 hours, 45 minutes time en route. The pilot calculated the fuel burn to be between 10.5 and 11.0 gallons per hour. With 55 gallons of usable fuel, this would equate to an endurance of 4.5 to 5.0 hours. When the airplane was 3 miles from the airport, the engine lost power. The pilot made a forced landing on an unprepared surface and collided with a ditch. The pilot said he had instructed airport personnel at Bullhead City to refuel the airplane, but to 'leave it down two inches.' He admitted the engine probably lost power due to 'fuel starvation.'
Probable cause
Fuel exhaustion because the pilot issued instructions that the fuel tanks not be filled to capacity. A factor was the unsuitable terrain on which to make a forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN99LA164
- Event ID
- 20001212X19500
- Case number
- DEN99LA164
- 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: 63b63bafcbb42066294d398dd5b862cb1012bfbba6029282de84f9c473db3aa9; retrieved 2026-09-22T14:16:16.154Z.