DEN04CA099 · Cessna 172N
Cessna 172N · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Manhattan Regional Airport (MHK) to Laramie Regional Airport (LAR)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN04CA099
- 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 172N
- 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
- N737YJ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Manhattan Regional Airport (MHK), Manhattan, KSTo Laramie Regional Airport (LAR), Laramie, WY
- 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 › In-flight planning/decision, 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, equipped with standard fuel tanks (43.0 gallons total, 40.0 gallons useable), was fueled to capacity prior to departure. The pilot and his passenger took off and flew for an estimated 4 hours, 14 minutes, before the engine lost power short of their destination. The pilot made a forced landing in a field. Postaccident examination revealed both fuel tanks were empty. The pilot admitted he had "run out of gas." According to a fuel calculations report submitted by the operator, "[If the pilot] received exactly full [fuel], flown exactly [a] straight line, leaned precisely, and the engine performed to the book, he would have arrived at KLAR with 1.8 gallons, or 15 minutes, which is half of VFR minimums and a lot less than safe, especially for a 450 nm trip. I think that says it all."
Probable cause
fuel exhaustion due to the pilot's improper inflight decision not to stop and refuel. A contributing factor was the unsuitable terrain on which to make a forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN04CA099
- Event ID
- 20040810X01182
- Case number
- DEN04CA099
- 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: 58bca5ab76d0fbcdd0d589a066923e7e84ccdd3ef64368e71ab5ce5961c687ad; retrieved 2026-09-22T07:10:05.017Z.