CHI02FA247 · Cessna 172N
Cessna 172N · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Saint Cloud Regional Airport (STC) to Price County Airport (PBH)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI02FA247
- 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
- 1 · 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
- N4731D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Saint Cloud Regional Airport (STC), ST CLOUD, MNTo Price County Airport (PBH), Phillips, WI
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Refueling, not performed
- Pilot in command › Unsuitable terrain or takeoff/landing/taxi area, encountered
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The Cessna 172 impacted into a cornfield on a night flight in visual meteorological conditions. The accident occurred at 2333 local time. That day, the pilot had flown the accident airplane on a 154 nautical mile leg. He had flown another airplane, a Beech 76, on two 56 nautical mile legs. In addition he had taken a flight examination in the Beech 76, consisting of 2.8 hours of ground testing and 1.5 hours of flight testing. These flights occurred prior to the pilot re-boarding the accident airplane for the 154 nautical mile return flight to the original departure airport. The accident occurred 93 nautical miles into the return flight. Examination of the airplane revealed no preexisting anomalies. The right wing fuel tank was breached but an un-compromised area below the height of the breach contained no fuel. The left wing came to rest inverted with the fuel filler cap was in place and no evidence of a fuel leaking from the cap. About 1 gallon of fuel was drained from the left fuel tank. The airplane rental logbook, the recording tachometer and recording hour-meter times indicate that the airplane had accumulated 4.8 engine hours and 5.5 hour-meter hours since being fueled four days prior to the accident. No records of subsequent fueling were found. The airplane flight manual lists a sea level fuel endurance, with 45 minutes reserve, of 3.9 hours at 75 percent power, 4.6 hours at 65 percent power, 5.5 hours at 55 percent power, and 6.4 hours at 45 percent power.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to refuel the airplane prior to departure leading to fuel exhaustion during the flight, the inadequate preflight/inflight planning, and the unsuitable terrain encountered by the pilot during the forced landing attempt. Contributing factors were the pilot being fatigued, the night lighting condition, and the corn crop.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI02FA247
- Event ID
- 20020822X01446
- Case number
- CHI02FA247
- 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 2002-08-14.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ca8d2934b70e0803f88316ffa589e36e1ab93a8302c4fab51abcf17d2fd6388a; retrieved 2026-09-20T19:54:50.520Z.