FTW01LA131 · Cessna 172N
Cessna 172N · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Hutchinson Municipal Airport (HUT) to Austin Bergstrom International Airport (AUS)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW01LA131
- 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 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
- N5447J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hutchinson Municipal Airport (HUT), Hutchinson, KSTo Austin Bergstrom International Airport (AUS), Austin, TX
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- 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; 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Fluid, fuel › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command › Refueling, not performed
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the day VFR cross-country flight, the single-engine airplane landed short of the runway following a total loss of engine power. The pilot reported that he had previously flown the reverse course without stopping for fuel en route. Further, the pilot stated that he knew the inaccuracy of the fuel gauges which read empty when 1/2 full. The airplane was refueled at the departure airport; however, there were no en route refueling stops on the day of the accident. The airplane was approximately 14 nautical miles from the destination airport when the pilot informed the controller that the airplane was "out of fuel." The pilot received radar vectors to the nearest airport. During the final approach, the airplane cleared high lines; however, the airplane "seemed to hit a downdraft over a grove of trees," and the nose landing gear struck the trees. Subsequently, the airplane impacted the ground. The wind was reported from 150 degrees at 16 knots with gust to 20 knots.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to refuel the aircraft resulting in fuel exhaustion during cruise flight. A contributing factor was the gusty wind encountered during the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW01LA131
- Event ID
- 20010530X01025
- Case number
- FTW01LA131
- 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, coordinates. 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: 3991922819eecd0cd8b05f8cba793f01d366a8e44b587da71463a9d46d08c5a3; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:56:31.547Z.