FTW01LA162 · Cessna 172N
Cessna 172N · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Easterwood Field (CLL) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW01LA162
- 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
- N7332F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Easterwood Field (CLL), College Station, TXTo 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
- En route · descent
- 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)
- 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
- Pilot in command › Engine shutdown, intentional
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After takeoff, the single-engine airplane climbed to 2,500 or 2,600 feet msl and proceeded to the practice area. After arriving at the practice area, the solo student pilot practiced a few steep turns and power on/power off stalls. After completion of the stalls, the airplane had ascended to 4,000 feet msl "so he decided to practice emergency landings." The student pilot applied carburetor heat, throttle to idle, and pulled the mixture out to "stop the prop." He then "established the best glide speed of 65 and looked for a field." The student pilot attempted to restart the engine at 2,000 feet msl by priming the engine 2 or 3 times, then carburetor heat off, mixture rich, and throttle 1/8 open. The engine turned over a couple of times, but would not start, so he set up to land in the field. During the landing roll, the airplane impacted a levee, became airborne again and then came to rest upright 20 feet from the levee.
Probable cause
the solo student pilot's intentional engine shutdown, while practicing emergency landing prodecures. A contributing factor was the lack of suitable terrain for the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW01LA162
- Event ID
- 20010713X01412
- Case number
- FTW01LA162
- 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: 41828711c3122f495f8f71c54688f8e56fe35b2623c31c39d1d225f3d118db5a; retrieved 2026-09-21T10:00:07.070Z.