LAX01LA158 · Cessna 170B
Cessna 170B · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From L15 · Henderson, NV to Henderson, NV
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX01LA158
- 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
- Unknown
- 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 170B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 170
- 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
- N2567C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From L15 · Henderson, NVTo Henderson, NV
- 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 · cruise
- 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 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 › Refueling, not performed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
In a telephone interview, the pilot stated that he left Henderson approximately 1230 for the local flight. He stated that he took off with an estimated 15 to 18 gallons of fuel onboard. There were no records indicating that the airplane had been fueled prior to the flight. He practiced flight maneuvers and three wheel landings at a nearby dry lake bed and then landed at Jean, Nevada, airport for a 20-minute rest stop. He did not fuel the aircraft at Jean airport, which had fuel service available. He stated that during his return to Henderson, the engine slowed down and stopped approximately 3 miles from the airport. He attempted a restart. The engine restarted and ran for about 1 minute and stopped again, resulting in a forced landing 1 mile short of the airport in rough desert terrain. He stated that the accident happened at 1400. This would indicate a flight time of 1 hour 10 minutes. According to the owner's manual for the airplane, the maximum fuel consumption at sea level with the mixture leaned is 12.5 gallons per hour. At a cruise altitude of 5,000 feet with mixture leaned, the fuel consumption is 9.6 gallons per hour. The airplane holds 42 gallons of fuel in two wing tanks. The useable fuel is 37 gallons. This leaves approximately 2.5 gallons of unusable fuel in each wing tank, which would result in 13 gallons available when the airplane initially departed.
Probable cause
The failure of the pilot to refuel the airplane, which resulted in fuel exhaustion and a forced landing in rough terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX01LA158
- Event ID
- 20010507X00895
- Case number
- LAX01LA158
- 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: 43b68d83ce7788f9eccf0d77409ee0c29dcd41b9df8173b349ad5c897b644b43; retrieved 2026-09-22T11:59:36.725Z.