SEA03LA117 · Cessna T337D
Cessna T337D · Accident: partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Johnson Creek Airport (3U2) to U59 · Driggs, ID
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA03LA117
- 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 T337D
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 337
- 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
- N86182
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Johnson Creek Airport (3U2), Yellow Pine, IDTo U59 · Driggs, 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 · 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
- Partial 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 › Refueling, not performed
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 calculated the distance to his destination at 201 nautical miles and estimated that he had 2 hours of fuel in the main tanks at the time of takeoff. Twelve minutes into the flight and leveling off at 13,500 feet MSL, the Global Positioning System was indicating a groundspeed of 190 knots, with the destination airport 59 minutes away. The pilot assumed he had close to 1 3/4 hours of fuel remaining, and elected to proceed directly to his destination rather than to stop and refuel. 80 nautical miles from the destination airport the pilot began a descent out of 8,000 feet MSL, and 60 nautical miles northwest of the airport he mentioned to his passenger that the right main fuel gauge, which feeds the rear engine, seemed to be reading lower than usual. The pilot switched over to the right aux tank, but two to three minutes later the rear engine started to cough. The pilot then switched back to the right main tank. Approximately 20 nautical miles from the destination airport the front engine began to fail from lack of fuel. The pilot attempted to crossfeed the front engine to the right main tank as the engine was starting to quit. Unable to keep the front engine running, the pilot feathered the front propeller. As the pilot was about to make a radio call on the airport's Unicom frequency, the rear engine began to fail from lack of fuel. The pilot feathered the rear propeller, retracted the flaps, reduced airspeed, and began looking for a forced landing site. The right seat passenger began to manually pump the gear down, but deciding that there was no suitable road within gliding range, the pilot elected to make a wheels up landing in a field. Touching down fairly hard and fast, the airplane spun 90 degrees to the left and began sliding sideways before coming to a stop in an upright position. There was no post-impact fire and neither the pilot or passenger sustained injury.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate inflight decision by failing to refuel while en route, resulting in fuel exhaustion and the loss of power. A factor contributing to the accident was the unsuitable terrain for the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA03LA117
- Event ID
- 20030701X00978
- Case number
- SEA03LA117
- 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: 977159d655aa9fd8f601f9d9681ae646ca96c5c866dcff5a2ae8718a66198fbc; retrieved 2026-09-22T09:06:38.015Z.