SEA05LA187 · Cessna 182E
Cessna 182E · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Harvey Field (S43) to Portland Hillsboro Airport (HIO)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA05LA187
- 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 182E
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- N2942Y
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Harvey Field (S43), Snohomish, WATo Portland Hillsboro Airport (HIO), Hillsboro, OR
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Fluid, fuel › Exhaustion
- Fluid, fuel › Improperly serviced
- Pilot in command › Aircraft preflight, 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 said that he had "topped the tanks" and secured the gas caps before his departure from Snohomish, Washington. He said that after approximately 30 minutes of flight, he noticed that the fuel tanks were reading approximately empty, and he "knew something was wrong." He immediately descended and headed for the nearest airport when the engine lost power. During the forced landing attempt, the aircraft impacted a utility pole and separated the outboard right wing tip. The airplane continued forward and rotated to the right, subsequently the left wing tip was bent/wrinkled against an earthen road embankment. Post accident evaluation by a Federal Aviation Administration Inspector and the evaluation of photographs taken by the pilot indicate that both caps were improperly attached, and there was residual evidence that fuel had been streaming aft from each refueling cap.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power as a result of fuel exhaustion due to the pilot's failure to properly secure the fuel caps during his self-servicing and (improperly) preflighting the airplane. A contributing factor was the utility pole.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA05LA187
- Event ID
- 20050909X01427
- Case number
- SEA05LA187
- 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: d93f5da67f16df967175b38f1ee136e1938d27b54234ec99fd723e52f267f46d; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:24:20.746Z.