ATL05CA016 · Cessna 172
Cessna 172 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Gainesville Regional Airport (GNV) to Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport (BTR)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL05CA016
- 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 172
- 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
- N2845Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Gainesville Regional Airport (GNV), Gainesville, FLTo Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport (BTR), Baton Rouge, LA
- 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
- 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
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, 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 pilot stated that the engine lost power approximately 10-20 miles north-northwest of Mobile Regional Airport, while flying at 8,500 feet. Attempts by the pilot to restart the engine were unsuccessful. The pilot radioed Mobile Control Tower and reported his loss of engine power. The tower controller cleared the flight to land on runway 14. The airplane collided with the ground 300 feet short of the runway 14. The examination of the airplane revealed that the engine compartment firewall and forward fuselage were buckled. The crankshaft was manually rotated through 360 degrees and engine drive-train continuity was established. The right magneto produced an ignition spark to each spark plug ignition lead when rotated. Examination of the fuel system revealed that both wing fuel tanks were intact, and less than one pint of 100 low lead fuel was recovered from the right wing fuel tank. No other fuel was recovered from the fuel system. No anomalies with the airframe or engine were observed. According to refueling records, the airplane was last topped off on October 27, 2004. There were no other refueling records from October 28, 2004. The airplane had flown one hour on October 28, 2004 before the accident flight, and was not refueled before the accident flight.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight planning and his inadequate in-flight planning/decision which resulted in fuel exhaustion and subsequent collision with the ground.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL05CA016
- Event ID
- 20041130X01880
- Case number
- ATL05CA016
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2004-10-29.
- API snapshot SHA-256: f95365399f0c6d191014f266eb6097b39f194154270b453b430409703ff8c0e5; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:34:05.065Z.