CHI04LA023 · Cessna A185E
Cessna A185E · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Albert J Lindberg Airport (5Y1) to Y66 · Drumman Island, MI
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI04LA023
- 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 A185E
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 185
- 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
- N3399L
- Operator
- Lonnie E. Avra · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Albert J Lindberg Airport (5Y1), Hessel, MITo Y66 · Drumman Island, MI
- 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
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane contacted rough terrain during an off airport forced landing following a loss of engine power. The pilot reported he had 11 gallons of fuel on board for the 15 minute flight and approximately 10 minutes after takeoff, the engine lost power. He reported he activated the fuel pump and the engine momentarily gained power. He stated the fuel selector was on "Both", the left fuel tank was indicating empty, and the right fuel tank was varying between 1/8 and 1/4 full. The pilot reported he was over a heavily wooded area when the engine lost power and he picked out a small clearing in which to land the airplane. He stated the clearing contained logs, rocks, stumps, and ruts, which were contacted during the forced landing. Post accident inspection of the airplane revealed 12 gallons of fuel were drained from the right fuel tank and a little over 2 gallons of fuel were drained from the left fuel tank. The fuel selector was found in the "Both" position. The inspection failed to reveal any mechanical failure/malfunction that would have resulted in the loss of engine power.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power for undetermined reasons. A factor associated with the accident was the rough terrain on which the airplane was landed.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI04LA023
- Event ID
- 20031031X01833
- Case number
- CHI04LA023
- 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: c16a52a6d412ee7f05056c5b2074e5b75dd23892bd342d67ee24b1cdce5f4a2f; retrieved 2026-09-22T08:20:50.712Z.