NYC90LA037 · Cessna 172G
Cessna 172G · Accident: loss of engine power on approach
From MA08 · Oxford, MA to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC90LA037
- 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 172G
- 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
- N4289L
- Operator
- Charles E. Michaud · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From MA08 · Oxford, MATo 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
- Approach · VFR go-around
- 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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; Stall/spin
- 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
- Fuel system › Ice
- Fuel system › Water
- Fuel system, strainer › Blocked(partial)
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Stall/spin, inadvertent
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Uxbridge, MA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
THE PILOT STATED THAT HE HAD FULL FUEL ON BOARD BEFORE TAKEOFF. HE HAD BEEN FLYING FOR APPROXIMATELY 35 MINUTES, WHEN THE ENGINE BEGAN TO RUN ROUGH. HE APPLIED CARBURETOR HEAT, BUT THE ENGINE DID NOT RESPOND. HE ATTEMPTED TO LAND IN AN INDUSTRIAL PARK, BUT WAS HIGH. WHILE MANEUVERING, THE ENGINE QUIT AND THE PILOT BANKED STEEPLY TO THE RIGHT TO AVOID A POWERLINE. THE AIRPLANE STALLED AND STRUCK THE GROUND. POST ACCIDENT EXAMINATION OF THE ENGINE AND FUEL SYSTEM REVEALED A LARGE PIECE OF ICE WAS ATTACHED TO THE FUEL STRAINER. THE ICE WAS OF SUFFICIENT SIZE TO BLOCK AT LEAST 50% OF THE FUEL FLOW.
Probable cause
ICE IN THE FUEL STRAINER, WHICH RESTRICTED FUEL FLOW & RESULTED IN FUEL STARVATION, AND THE PILOT INADVERTENTLY STALLED THE AIRPLANE, WHEN HE ABRUPTLY MANEUVERED IT TO AVOID A TRANSMISSION WIRE DURING A FORCED LANDING.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC90LA037
- Event ID
- 20001213X30008
- Case number
- NYC90LA037
- 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: 4b2d072a26fdd0095788e0d7d1f836c62e11007e750c95abc40f5cd6f9c83a3f; retrieved 2026-09-21T15:46:21.785Z.