NYC01LA036 · Cessna 172L
Cessna 172L · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) on approach
From Doylestown Airport (DYL) to Front Royal Warren County Airport (FRR)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC01LA036
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna 172L
- 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
- N2843Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Doylestown Airport (DYL), Doylestown, PATo Front Royal Warren County Airport (FRR), Front Royal, VA
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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 › In-flight briefing service, not obtained
- Pilot in command › Preflight briefing service, not obtained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot flew for 2 hours and arrived after the airport had closed. Unable to obtain fuel, and with no ground transportation available, he elected to spent the night in the airplane. He departed at 0430 the following morning, and did not obtain a pre-departure or en route weather briefing. Low clouds covered his planned destination airport. He diverted to two other nearby airports, which were also covered by low clouds, and then returned to his destination airport, which was still covered by clouds. He contacted approach control, reported that he was low on fuel, and requested vectors to a nearby VFR airport. He was vectored toward an airport; however, the engine lost power prior to reaching it. The airplane was landed in a field about 2 miles from the airport. The pilot reported that at the time of the accident it was hazy and he could see the runway. He further added that the clouds came in immediately after the accident. A FAA inspector reported the fuel tanks were empty, and there was no evidence of fuel leakage or siphoning. The pilot estimated the airplane had been flown about 5 1/2 hours since the last refueling.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to obtain a pre-departure or en route weather briefing, which led to fuel exhaustion, after his destination and alternate airports were covered by fog. A factor was the fog.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC01LA036
- Event ID
- 20001212X22331
- Case number
- NYC01LA036
- 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: e5121751fc3a5475e9001c156012912f1b2659c137473a439c3f5d0119bcbe3c; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:02:48.691Z.