DEN03LA088 · Cessna 175B
Cessna 175B · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Winnemucca Municipal Airport (WMC) to Cedar City Regional Airport (CDC)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN03LA088
- 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 175B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 175
- 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
- N8199T
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Winnemucca Municipal Airport (WMC), Winnemucca, NVTo Cedar City Regional Airport (CDC), Cedar City, UT
- 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)
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Directional control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Fuel tank selector position, inadvertent deactivation
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was en route to attend his grandson's graduation. The pilot made an en route stop and the airplane was refueled to capacity. Forty-five minutes after departure, the pilot encountered "light to moderate turbulence with strong updrafts." He moved his flight bag, which had been on the right front seat, and placed it on the cabin floor behind his seat. He did not realize that the bag's shoulder strap had slid between the seats and was wrapped around the fuel selector handle. When he moved the bag, he inadvertently moved the selector handle from BOTH to the RIGHT tank position. With his destination in sight, the pilot initiated a slow descent. Approximately 3 to 4 miles north of the airport, the engine lost power. The pilot attempted to move the fuel selector to another tank, but the shoulder pad was securely wedged under the handle. Unable to extend the glide because of low altitude, he notified the airport of his intentions and made a forced landing on a dirt road. As the airplane came over a slight rise in the road that dropped off abruptly, it became airborne again. A left crosswind caused the airplane to drift off the right side of the road and it struck a cedar tree.
Probable cause
the pilot's inadvertently switching the fuel selector to the right tank, resulting in fuel starvation, and his failure to maintain direction control during the forced landing. Contributing factors were the crosswind and the tree.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN03LA088
- Event ID
- 20030605X00784
- Case number
- DEN03LA088
- 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: 20396eaa7f5bbb9ae12827af6fe1fbdd00bcb211963f08bc92cd9a6c739bccc8; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:29:00.319Z.