ANC99LA151 · Cessna 172
Cessna 172 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Wasilla Airport (IYS) to Edward G. Pitka Sr Airport (GAL)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC99LA151
- 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 172
- 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
- N5309R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wasilla Airport (IYS), NEW WASILLA, AKTo Edward G. Pitka Sr Airport (GAL)
- 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; 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
- Fluid, fuel › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command › Refueling, not performed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot closed his flight plan, stating that the airport was in sight. The pilot of a departing airplane told the NTSB investigator that the accident pilot transmitted he was 'five miles out for landing, followed by 'I'm three miles out, just ran out of fuel at 1,000 feet, and am going to try to land on a road or the closed airstrip.' The pilot said he was unable to reach the closed airstrip, it was dark, and the airplane landed in the trees. The pilot said he thought he departed with a full fuel load of 39 gallons (38 gallons usable), but did not visually confirm the tanks were topped off after the lineman from a Fixed Base Operator filled the airplane's tanks. He said the flight lasted 4 hours 37 minutes. The cruise performance charts for a Cessna 172 with an O-300 engine predict fuel consumption at 2,400 rpm between 8.1 and 9.2 gallons per hour.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to refuel, and the resulting fuel exhaustion. A factor was the dark night which hampered location of a nearby closed, and unlit, airstrip.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC99LA151
- Event ID
- 20001212X19677
- Case number
- ANC99LA151
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1999-09-24.
- API snapshot SHA-256: cdbcc67e77033b8d79c7bff0def3ce673db6e60e0a71519410ea60eeb69aa9aa; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:23:00.949Z.