NYC05LA036 · Cessna 175B
Cessna 175B · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Nashville International Airport (BNA) to Capital City Airport (FFT)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC05LA036
- 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 175B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 175
- 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
- N8141T
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Nashville International Airport (BNA), Nashville, TNTo Capital City Airport (FFT), Frankfort, KY
- 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
- Fluid, fuel › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, inadequate
- 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 estimated that he departed with about 1.5 hours of fuel on board, and that the flight time to his destination airport would take about an hour. About 35 minutes after takeoff, the airplane was in cruise flight at 2,000 feet, with the fuel selector positioned to "both," when the engine began to lose power, and the pilot elected to perform a forced landing to a field. The engine completely quit about 500 feet above the ground. During the landing, the nose gear separated, the firewall buckled, and a portion of the fuselage was wrinkled. The airplane came to rest canted to the right. Examination of the airplane did not reveal any pre-impact mechanical malfunctions. No fuel was present in the left fuel tank, and approximately 5 gallons of clean automotive gasoline was drained from the right fuel tank. In addition, there was no evidence of a fuel spill at the accident site. According to the airplane owner's manual, the fuel system included two 26 gallon aluminum fuel tanks, with a useable fuel amount of 21 gallons from each tank, "in all flight attitudes."
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate pre-flight planning and in-flight planning decision, which resulted in a loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion, and a subsequent forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC05LA036
- Event ID
- 20050111X00032
- Case number
- NYC05LA036
- 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: 06761480f342676d42f2e9c2ef13f515e4a13867f7ce3613d3ffe7444ee3f1ad; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:05:27.546Z.