ATL01LA062 · Cessna 172L
Cessna 172L · Accident: loss of engine power on approach
From Weedon Field (KEUF) to George R Carr Memorial Air Field (KBXA)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL01LA062
- 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 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
- N18PF
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Weedon Field (KEUF), Eufaula, ALTo George R Carr Memorial Air Field (KBXA), Bogolusa, LA
- 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
- 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; Utility pole
- 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 › Starvation
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, he was enroute when the engine lost power and quit. During an emergency descent out of 4500 feet, the pilot attempted to restore full engine power but failed. During the emergency descent to land in a hilly farm field, the airplane's left wing struck a utility pole severing the left wing from the airplane. During the onsite inspection, the two main fuel tanks were found to be empty as well as the right auxiliary fuel tank. The left auxiliary fuel tank had approximately 11.5 gallons. The pilot attempted, but was unable to switch to the left auxiliary fuel tank due to a blown fuse. The fuses to the auxiliary fuel tanks are not accessible to the pilot in flight, this resulted in his inability to check them for condition or replace them, in flight.
Probable cause
The pilot's inflight fuel planning /decision that resulted in fuel starvation and a loss of engine power. A factor was the failure of the fuel transfer pump.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL01LA062
- Event ID
- 20010608X01096
- Case number
- ATL01LA062
- 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: 36b4eff3916f466015540158fa2a28fe806e0d88524bd610996a2c4bc4a51321; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:56:15.114Z.