LAX02LA182 · Cessna 172M
Cessna 172M · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Porterville Municipal Airport (PTV) to Placerville Airport (PVF)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX02LA182
- 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 172M
- 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
- N61569
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Porterville Municipal Airport (PTV), Porterville, CATo Placerville Airport (PVF), Placerville, 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
- 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 (non-mechanical)
- 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 › In-flight planning/decision, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane lost engine power and collided with trees during a forced landing. The pilot planned the flight from Ramona, California, to the destination with an intermediate stop at Porterville. The total distance was 396 nm and the en route flight time was projected at 4 hours 6 minutes. The first leg to Porterville was uneventful and the pilot and passenger had lunch. No fuel was added to the tanks while at Porterville. The pilot said that during the second leg of the flight, about 1 hour 15 minutes after departure and while nearing the destination, the engine began to operate as though it was "starved for gasoline." The propeller continued to rotate; however, the engine failed to produce thrust. The pilot performed an emergency landing on a meadow and during the landing roll, the airplane impacted trees. Responding rescue personnel reported that there was no fire and no smell of fuel at the scene. An aircraft recovery service that retrieved the wreckage reported that no fuel was found in the aircraft at the accident site and that the vegetation surrounding the wreckage was not dead. An aircraft and engine examination, which included a detailed look at the fuel system components, revealed no evidence of preimpact mechanical malfunction or failures. The aircraft was equipped with the standard range fuel tanks with a total useable capacity of 38 gallons.
Probable cause
the pilot's inadequate preflight planning/preparation and his in-flight planning/decision resulting in fuel exhaustion and loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX02LA182
- Event ID
- 20020607X00833
- Case number
- LAX02LA182
- 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: eac62ae713e7bc9cb68f88997d87200e0ee5bb307c0007d1f12320278e7f61f1; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:38:56.012Z.