NYC05FA140 · Cessna 177A
Cessna 177A · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) on approach
From Block Island State Airport (BID) to Teterboro Airport (TEB)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC05FA140
- 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
- 1 · 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 177A
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 177
- 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
- N30491
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Block Island State Airport (BID), Block Island, RITo Teterboro Airport (TEB), Teterboro, NJ
- 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
- Approach
- 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; Utility pole
- 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 › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On the day of the accident, the pilot and passenger flew from the pilot's home airport to the destination airport approximately one hour away. Prior to departing from the destination airport, the pilot performed several touch-and-go landings at night for currency reasons, and then the pilot and passenger departed for the return flight. After flying for about an hour, the pilot declared an emergency, and was radar vectored to the closest airport. She advised air traffic control that the airplane was "out of fuel," and that she "hope[d] to make it to the runway." The airplane impacted a utility pole and a building approximately 1/4 mile from the end of the runway. Examination of the airplane and engine revealed no mechanical anomalies. Four gallons of fuel were drained from the right fuel tank, and the left tank was empty. The pilot refueled the airplane on the day prior to the accident, at an airport 50 miles from her home airport. According to the Cessna 177 Owner's Manual, the average fuel burn rate was between 8 gallons per hour (gph) and 10 gph. Toxicological testing performed on the pilot's blood detected alprazolam (a prescription anti-anxiety medication also known by the trade name Xanax) at a level consistent with recent ingestion of an impairing dose of the medication. Testing additionally detected diazepam (a prescription anti-anxiety medication also known by the trade name Valium) in the pilot's blood. The two medications detected are not typically indicated for use together. The pilot, a self-employed psychologist, had not reported any mental conditions or use of medications on her applications for airman medical certificate.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight planning, which resulted in fuel exhaustion and subsequent loss of engine power. A factor in the accident was the pilot's impairment from prescription medication.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC05FA140
- Event ID
- 20050914X01457
- Case number
- NYC05FA140
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2005-09-03.
- API snapshot SHA-256: d3584837f68cfa0a23bf2f13a9f45a14c2aa92b543d6070e75f589270b842ff7; retrieved 2026-09-20T17:54:15.746Z.