SEA03LA093 · Cessna 175
Cessna 175 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From West Buttercreek Airport (OL02) to Hubler Field (ID00)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA03LA093
- 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 175
- 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
- N7238M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From West Buttercreek Airport (OL02), Echo, ORTo Hubler Field (ID00), Caldwell, ID
- 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 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
- Fluid, fuel › Starvation
- Pilot in command › Checklist, not followed
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of the Cessna 175 departed Caldwell, Idaho, with 52 gallons of fuel (43 gallons usable total or 4.5 gallons unusable fuel per tank) and flew 1 hour and 40 minutes to his destination, Echo, Oregon. He subsequently departed Echo and flew back to his origination airport arriving over the airstrip about 1 hour and 20 minutes later. During the return flight he selected the left tank to balance out the fuel load and left the fuel selector in that position. While overhead his destination the engine lost power, and having no time to troubleshoot the problem, and not wanting to risk crossing high trees in an attempt to reach the end of the runway, he executed a forced landing off airport. The aircraft rolled through uneven terrain incurring substantial damage. An FAA inspector examined the aircraft and found approximately one gallon of fuel in the left tank and approximately 14 gallons of fuel in the right. The first item on the Cessna 175 Owner's Manual "Before Landing" checklist was: Set fuel selector to "both tanks."
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to follow the checklist which led to fuel starvation and subsequent loss of engine power. A contributing factor was the uneven terrain at the landing site.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA03LA093
- Event ID
- 20030611X00856
- Case number
- SEA03LA093
- 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 2003-06-05.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 60a9d411c1ee5db423c79b3cd3835a0c83e64aa1897664ad4c871dccb165f447; retrieved 2026-09-22T09:12:25.752Z.