IAD05LA013 · Cessna 172E
Cessna 172E · Accident: partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Johnston Regional Airport (JNX) to Summersville Airport (SXL)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD05LA013
- 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 172E
- 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
- N3750S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Johnston Regional Airport (JNX), Smithfield, NCTo Summersville Airport (SXL), Summersville, WV
- 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
- Partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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
- Fuel system, carburetor › Ice
- Pilot in command › Carburetor heat, delayed
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While in cruise flight, the air temperature was 35 degrees at 4,500 feet, and the cabin heat was turned on. About 10 to 20 minutes later, the airplane encountered light mist, and approximately 40-50 nautical miles later, with deteriorating weather, the pilot decided to turn around. Shortly thereafter, "the engine was not making full power and was missing. Carburetor ice was suspected with the high humidity and the low outside air temperature." The pilot applied carburetor heat for about 1 minute, but it had no effect. The engine continued to run roughly, and engine rpm decreased to approximately 2,000 to 2,100 rpm. The pilot reapplied carburetor heat, but there was no improvement in engine performance. The pilot felt that he could not safely transition higher terrain en route to his destination, so he decided to make a precautionary landing on a logging road. During the landing, the pilot noticed a bulldozer on the road. The pilot swerved the airplane off the road to avoid the bulldozer, and the left wing impacted a tree.
Probable cause
The pilot’s delayed application of carburetor heat, which resulted in a rough running engine. A factor was the bulldozer on the logging road where the pilot performed a precautionary landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD05LA013
- Event ID
- 20041201X01896
- Case number
- IAD05LA013
- 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: 26c12c46a805dac228e200ecc865e0ef5aef23b4c13d7aa0655ec41f5c911f22; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:30:11.091Z.