CHI03LA226 · Cessna 177
Cessna 177 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From C75 · Marshalltown, IA to Lincoln Airport (LNK)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI03LA226
- 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 177
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 177
- 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
- N2336Y
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From C75 · Marshalltown, IATo Lincoln Airport (LNK), Lincoln, NE
- 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
- 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 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 › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was substantially damaged when it impacted a tree during a forced landing. The pilot reported that after fueling the airplane he and a passenger departed for a cross-country flight. While en route the pilot noticed that his fuel gauges were indicating a lower amount of fuel than he had anticipated. The pilot stated that the engine lost power during cruise flight. He was able to restart the engine after switching to the other fuel tank, but only for a short time. The pilot notified the approach controller but was unable to make it to a nearby airport. The pilot performed a forced landing on a local highway. The airplane struck tree branches on the landing roll. Subsequent to the accident, the pilot stated that he found out that "there was little fuel if any left in the aircraft." A test run of the accident aircraft's engine revealed no anomalies.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight planning/preparation which led to fuel exhaustion and subsequent loss of engine power. Contributing to the accident were the trees and unsuitable terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI03LA226
- Event ID
- 20030729X01211
- Case number
- CHI03LA226
- 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 2003-07-27.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 5c5413752fb1568c24a5e7513c945489a7b3142ddc6262dd1d1b35b3a5b07394; retrieved 2026-09-22T08:52:55.307Z.