LAX04CA117 · Cessna A185F
Cessna A185F · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Q40 · Sunset Sky Ranc, CA to Visalia Municipal Airport (VIS)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX04CA117
- 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 A185F
- 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
- N8702Z
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Q40 · Sunset Sky Ranc, CATo Visalia Municipal Airport (VIS), Visalia, CA
- 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 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(cfi) › Fuel supply, inadequate
- Pilot in command(cfi) › In-flight planning/decision, 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 made an off airport landing in a field following a total loss of engine power. While in cruise flight, about 25 miles north of the pilot's planned destination, the engine lost power. He switched the fuel selector to the left position, but the engine would not restart. After clearing several power lines, he made a forced landing in a sandy, dirt field. On the landing rollout, more than halfway across the field, he applied brake pressure and the wheels dug into the soft terrain. The airplane nosed over and came to rest inverted. The pilot had recently bought the airplane and had only accumulated about 2-3 hours in it. He thought that the accident was the result of fuel exhaustion, and noted that he did not use the electric boost pump while attempting a restart due to his lack of familiarity with the airplane. Four gallons were drained from the fuel system after the accident. According to the FAA approved flight manual for the airplane, the fuel system total capacity is 80 gallons, with 6 gallons unusable. The pilot reported no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane.
Probable cause
the pilot's inadequate in-flight planning/decision, which resulted in fuel exhaustion and loss of engine power due to an inadequate fuel supply. A factor in the accident was the pilot's lack of familiarity with the airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX04CA117
- Event ID
- 20040306X00281
- Case number
- LAX04CA117
- 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: d187902b0df188d95aaf4d55ee7e905e58e345a41bb10e891feb10d806ee0ffd; retrieved 2026-09-22T07:59:21.390Z.