CHI99LA348 · Cessna 172N
Cessna 172N · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Lakeland Airport Noble F Lee Memorial Field (ARV) to Des Moines International Airport (DSM)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI99LA348
- 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 172N
- 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
- N738FA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lakeland Airport Noble F Lee Memorial Field (ARV), Woodruff, WITo Des Moines International Airport (DSM)
- 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; Utility pole
- 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 › In-flight planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said that 'he encountered engine failure' at 3,000 feet mean sea level. The pilot performed a forced landing to a street in a residential area, 1.6 miles east of the Des Moines International Airport, Des Moines, Iowa. The pilot said, 'Upon landing, I struck a telephone pole with the left wing.' Examination of the airplane's two main fuel tanks revealed no fuel. Approximately 1 pint of fuel was recovered from the accumulator tank and lines to the engine. No other anomalies were found.
Probable cause
the pilot's improper in-flight planning and decisions which led to fuel exhaustion. A factor relating to this accident was the telephone pole.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI99LA348
- Event ID
- 20001212X19718
- Case number
- CHI99LA348
- 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 1999-09-27.
- API snapshot SHA-256: a2d34eb16ae8c7f530766948d0c76d9b391022663e78360d4065a9faad3858c0; retrieved 2026-09-22T13:59:24.581Z.