NYC01LA030 · Cessna 172N
Cessna 172N · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during initial climb
From Danbury Municipal Airport (DXR) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC01LA030
- 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
- N4654G
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Danbury Municipal Airport (DXR)To 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
- Initial climb
- 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 starvation; 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Fluid, fuel › Starvation
- Pilot in command › Fuel tank selector position, not verified
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Ridgefield, CT, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that shortly before takeoff, she switched the airplane's fuel selector from the "right" position to the "both" position. During the initial climb after takeoff, the airplane's engine experienced momentary roughness followed by a loss of power. The pilot began performing the loss of engine power emergency checklist and verified that both the mixture and throttle controls were in the full forward position; however, she then needed to use both hands to maintain the airplane's glide attitude and was not able to verify the fuel selector position. The airplane struck trees, fell to ground and a post crash fire ensued. The majority of the airplane was consumed in the fire. A complete teardown of the engine did not reveal any pre-impact mechanical failures. Examination of the fuel selector revealed its position was approximately 35-degrees counterclockwise from the "both" tanks position, towards the "left" tank position; which would have resulted in a restricted fuel flow.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to verify the airplane's fuel tank selector position, which resulted in a loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC01LA030
- Event ID
- 20001212X22327
- Case number
- NYC01LA030
- 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: 6259ace812042fb1cc1f45c98a2408951e9cd9c74ff29b6b7037d48afab9f29b; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:02:58.315Z.