ATL05LA156 · Cessna 172S
Airborne Systems Cessna 172S · Accident: loss of engine power during initial climb
From X46 · Opa Locka, FL to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL05LA156
- 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 172S
- 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
- N5213M
- Operator
- Airborne Systems
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From X46 · Opa Locka, FLTo not recorded
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- 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 › Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot stated he had just completed a touch and go landing and was between 50 to 100 feet AGL on initial climb out when the engine sputtered and lost power. He lowered the nose and made a forced landing on the runway. There was insufficient runway remaining to stop the airplane. The airplane went off the end of the runway about 150 feet, encountered a 3 foot drop off, collapsed the nose wheel, and came to a complete stop. Forty gallons of 100-low lead fuel was drained from the fuel tanks. The fuel strainer was drained and there was no evidence of fuel contamination. The fuel lines from the wing fuselage juncture to the fuel strainer revealed no evidence of blockage, and the fuel screens were free of contamination. The engine assembly was removed and transported to an authorized repair facility for an examination. The engine was mounted in a test stand and an alternate fuel, battery source, and electric fuel pump was attached. A test club propeller, engine controls, and a magneto grounding wires were installed. The engine was started and ran through multiple cycles from idle power to full power. The engine idled smoothly between 550 to 650 rpm and exhibited 25 rpm rise when the when the mixture was cut off. After the engine warmed up, the throttle was advanced to 2,000 rpm and a magneto check was completed. The throttle was advanced to full power and back to the idle position. The engine was shut down with the mixture control.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL05LA156
- Event ID
- 20050906X01381
- Case number
- ATL05LA156
- 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: 51dfbda65df5761ae775dfee86e0488f92f5440bf4d029973b76f431a112fd62; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:25:24.946Z.