ATL04LA025 · Cessna U206F
Cessna U206F · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Concord-Padgett Regional Airport (JQF) to PFN · Panama City, FL
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL04LA025
- 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 U206F
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 206
- 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
- N3007R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Concord-Padgett Regional Airport (JQF), Concord, NCTo PFN · Panama City, FL
- 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 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 was in cruise flight when the airplane experienced a total loss of engine power. The pilot initiated a forced landing and collided with trees and the ground. The left inboard and outboard fuel caps were installed with a tight seal. Sixteen gallons of fuel was recovered from the left main fuel tank. The right inboard and outboard main fuel caps were not installed. The checklist states, " Fuel Filler Cap- Secure and vent unobstructed." No fuel was recovered from the right main fuel tank. No browning of vegetation or fuel leak was observed at the crash site. A leak test was performed on the left and right fuel tanks and no leaks were observed. Shop air was introduced into the forward and aft pick up lines for the left and right fuel tank positions and no anomalies were noted.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to follow the checklist to ensure the fuel filler cap was secured resulting in fuel starvation and subsequent loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL04LA025
- Event ID
- 20031028X01817
- Case number
- ATL04LA025
- 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: f00b5c8204a1a3cf791e7c785d27b97ca47ef3d329a169d109f6e326a4a7ed5d; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:21:34.557Z.