CHI04CA091 · Cessna C-180
Cessna C-180 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (BJC) to Aberdeen Regional Airport (ABR)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI04CA091
- 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 C-180
- Aircraft type
- Cessna C-180
- 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
- N2916C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (BJC), Denver, COTo Aberdeen Regional Airport (ABR), Aberdeen, SD
- 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
- 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 starvation/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 › Starvation/exhaustion
- Pilot in command › Fuel management, improper
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 damaged when it nosed over after impacting a road embankment during a forced landing following a complete loss of engine power. According to the pilot, the cruise portion of the flight was conducted at a power setting of 22 inches of manifold pressure and 2,350 RPM. He stated that he had not yet transferred fuel from the auxiliary fuel tanks to the main tanks. The auxiliary tanks are operated by transferring fuel to the main tanks and then the main tanks deliver fuel to the engine. The airplane had a STC'd (Supplemental Type Certificate) engine conversion and a representative of the company stated that at 22 to 23 inches of manifold pressure and 2,300 RPM, the engine should burn about 13 gallons of fuel per hour. The main fuel tanks had a combined fuel capacity of 60 gallons with 55 gallons useable. Subsequent to the accident, the main fuel tanks contained a combined total of 1/2 gallon of fuel. The auxiliary fuel tanks had a combined total of 14 gallons of fuel. The pilot stated that at the time the engine stopped producing power both fuel quantity gauges read 1/4 full.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper fuel management due to his delay in transferring auxiliary fuel which resulted in exhaustion of fuel from the main fuel tanks. The excessive fuel flow for undetermined reasons, the road embankment, the inaccurate fuel level indicators, the unsuitable terrain encountered for the forced landing, and the low altitude were factors.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI04CA091
- Event ID
- 20040419X00484
- Case number
- CHI04CA091
- 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: 8e42aed95872767992f6c33e89c2ee78b452e24c0b326ddea4ce9b90783e5768; retrieved 2026-09-22T07:48:06.603Z.