NYC02LA122 · Cessna 182B
Cessna 182B · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Ellington Airport (7B9) to Ellington Airport (7B9)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC02LA122
- 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 182B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- N2516G
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ellington Airport (7B9), Ellington, CTTo Ellington Airport (7B9), Ellington, CT
- 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
- 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
- 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 › Distance/altitude, misjudged
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After the parachutists jumped, the airplane was descending through 9,000 feet msl, and the engine lost partial power. The pilot verified that carburetor heat was on, the cowl flaps were closed, the fuel selector was positioned to "Both," and the mixture was rich. She continued descending and entered a left traffic pattern for the runway. The pilot initially judged her pattern distance based on the available engine power. However, while turning from base to final leg, the engine lost all power. The pilot did not think that she would be able to glide to the runway, and planned a forced landing to the parachute drop zone. She was subsequently too high for that field, and performed a forced landing in a cornfield. After the accident, an FAA inspector performed a successful engine run, utilizing both fuel tanks. Examination of the wreckage revealed that the fuel tanks had not been compromised. The left tank contained approximately 2 gallons of fuel and the right tank contained approximately 6.75 gallons. Review of fueling records revealed that the airplane was fueled to capacity 3.9 hours prior to the accident, according to the tachometer. During that period, the pilot had added 4.5 gallons to the right fuel tank. Review of the airplane owner's manual revealed that the engine consumed approximately 14 gallons of fuel per hour, and 10 gallons of fuel were unusable during normal flight operations.
Probable cause
The pilot's misjudged distance/altitude during an emergency landing, which resulted in an undershoot and subsequent forced landing to a cornfield. A factor was the pilot's inadequate preflight planning, which resulted in fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC02LA122
- Event ID
- 20020701X01015
- Case number
- NYC02LA122
- 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: a935763b87324551f1b286c2a76eae155ac2f07392261a954105c85d5d68efe0; retrieved 2026-09-22T10:48:22.712Z.