IAD04LA024 · Cessna 172P
Cessna 172P · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Igor I Sikorsky Memorial Airport (BDR) to Essex County Airport (CDW)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD04LA024
- 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 172P
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- 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
- N53565
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Igor I Sikorsky Memorial Airport (BDR), Bridgeport, CTTo Essex County Airport (CDW), Caldwell, NJ
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane, having recently undergone "numerous" repairs following 18 months of storage, was being positioned for a pre-purchase inspection. About halfway between the initial departure airport and final destination airport, the engine began to run roughly, so the pilot elected to land and check it on the ground. While on the ground, the pilot did not find any abnormalities, and he departed for again for his intended destination. About 45 minutes later, the engine suddenly stopped, and the pilot performed a forced landing to a golf course. After touchdown, when the pilot maneuvered the airplane to avoid a golfer, the airplane struck a tree and came to a stop in a sand trap. At the scene, a Federal Aviation Administration inspector partially removed the engine cowl to disconnect the battery. All exterior damage was noted, and fuel was observed leaking from the fuel tanks. The wings were subsequently removed to facilitate airplane transport to a storage facility. The engine was run at that facility, while still attached to the airframe, "at idle and at power." However, the fuel was utilized from a different source, and plumbed directly into the carburetor.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power for undetermined reasons. A factor was the evasive maneuver on the ground.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD04LA024
- Event ID
- 20040624X00861
- Case number
- IAD04LA024
- 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: bd5155cb355a0edc5a9b8f7aac15bde3fa0b67bf07479cad513c61a439411cfb; retrieved 2026-09-22T07:21:40.518Z.