ATL05CA165 · Cessna C172F
Cessna C172F · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Madison County Executive Airport-Tom Sharp Jr Field (KMDQ) to Tri-State Airport / Milton J. Ferguson Field (KHTS)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL05CA165
- 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 C172F
- 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
- N8513U
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Madison County Executive Airport-Tom Sharp Jr Field (KMDQ), Huntsville, ALTo Tri-State Airport / Milton J. Ferguson Field (KHTS), Huntington, WV
- 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
- 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 › Carburetor heat, delayed
- Weather condition › Carburetor icing conditions
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was about 43 minutes into a cross country flight when the engine began to sputter and lost power. The pilot's attempts to restart the engine were unsuccessful and he chose to make a forced landing to a nearby field. During the approach to land, the left wing struck a tree and the airplane collided with the ground and burst into flames. Post-accident examination of the airplane revealed continuity from the engine power quadrant to the carburetor. The fuel screen of the carburetor was observed free of debris. The needle valve in the carburetor remained attached to the float and was binding in the needle valve seat. The carburetor bowl was free of debris and was undamaged. Weather conditions at the time of the accident were favorable for the formation of carburetor icing. The pilot reported that he did not apply carburetor heat until after the loss of engine power.
Probable cause
The pilot's delay in applying carburetor heat that resulted in the loss of engine power due to carburetor ice.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL05CA165
- Event ID
- 20051026X01738
- Case number
- ATL05CA165
- 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. 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: 54de3946fcbb2f42bc0e44f5334a0ab6945cc3d95a1f7681d3e96577ff10ae9e; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:19:57.677Z.