LAX02FA040 · Cessna 172C
Cessna 172C · Accident: partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during landing
From Henderson Executive Airport (HND) to Corona Municipal Airport (AJO)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX02FA040
- 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 172C
- 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
- N1834Y
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Henderson Executive Airport (HND), Henderson, NVTo Corona Municipal Airport (AJO), Corona, CA
- 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
- Landing · aborted
- 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
- Partial 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 › Carburetor heat, improper use of
- Weather condition › Carburetor icing conditions
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During an aborted landing attempt, the engine lost power and the airplane impacted soft swampy terrain. The nose wheel impacted the terrain first and was sheared off. The airplane came to an abrupt stop, and came to rest upright. On the approach the student pilot/owner/operator, who was also the pilot flying, moved the fuel selector to the BOTH position. He did not visually verify the fuel selector's actual position, he did it by feel. The airplane landed hard and began to porpoise down the runway. The private pilot, seated in the right seat, took the flight controls from the student pilot and initiated an aborted landing. He advanced the throttle, and the airplane climbed to 80 feet when the engine quit. The private pilot aimed the airplane towards the ground to avoid trees situated off the departure end of the runway. The student pilot refueled the airplane prior to departure, and noted no mechanical anomalies on the return flight. After the accident, fuel was observed in both fuel tanks. Due to the nose down, wing low attitude of the airplane on-scene, a determination could not be made as to the amount of fuel on board. Post accident examination of the airframe and engine disclosed no evidence of a preimpact mechanical malfunction or failure. The carburetor heat control was found in the off position. According to the aviation routine weather report for an airport 10 statute miles from the accident site, the temperature/dew point was 45 degrees and 41 degrees Fahrenheit, respectively. According to the Carburetor Icing Probability Chart, the conditions were conducive to serious icing.
Probable cause
a loss of engine power due to the pilot's improper use of the carburetor heat controls while in weather conditions conducive to serious carburetor icing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX02FA040
- Event ID
- 20011226X02440
- Case number
- LAX02FA040
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2001-12-05.
- API snapshot SHA-256: b6cf7b9718ade3922f1c63cde2d6c7190280dfde5ed8f0ba46e2df8c4a4c20dc; retrieved 2026-09-22T11:17:26.918Z.