ATL05CA074 · Cessna 172H
Cessna 172H · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From DeKalb Peachtree Airport (PDK) to DeKalb Peachtree Airport (PDK)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL05CA074
- 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 172H
- 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
- N1643F
- Operator
- Ryan Funk
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From DeKalb Peachtree Airport (PDK), Dekalb, GATo DeKalb Peachtree Airport (PDK)
- 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
- Wire, transmission
- 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 › Contamination, other than water
- Fuel system, carburetor › Restricted
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, after about 30-minutes of flight he felt a slight shudder in the engine which lasted for about three seconds. The engine did not lose any power and all instruments remained in the green. About 5-minutes later, with no indication or warning, the engine immediately stopped and the propeller wind milled. During the forced landing the airplane struck a power line, and landed hard on the main landing gear. Examination of the engine found the carburetor broken at its attach point on the intake manifold on the bottom of the engine. The carburetor was removed and disassembled. Examination of the carburetor float bowl found reddish/brown particles resting in the bottom of the float bowl. Additionally, flakes of the reddish/brown particles were found clogging the carburetor jet pickup. A replacement carburetor was installed on the engine and the engine was started and was run up to 1500 revolutions per minute. The engine ran for about five-minutes before being shutdown with the mixture control.
Probable cause
Loss of engine power due to fuel system contamination.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL05CA074
- Event ID
- 20050505X00561
- Case number
- ATL05CA074
- 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: 3eb20d58f58cb455b4dc5cde914cff7a0ef6d9f7402d9c9780f1f338d8b5f6a2; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:02:46.617Z.