NYC06LA028 · Cessna 172L
Cessna 172L · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during initial climb
From Beltzville Airport (14N) to Slatington Airport (69N)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC06LA028
- 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 172L
- 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
- N7684G
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Beltzville Airport (14N), Lehighton, PATo Slatington Airport (69N), Slatington, PA
- 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
- 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 contamination
- 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 › 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 airplane had not flown for several weeks. The pilot stated that he sumped both fuel tanks and the gascolator during the preflight inspection. The taxi and engine run-up were normal, and the airplane departed on a 2,020-foot-long, 100-foot-wide, turf runway. About 250 feet above the ground, the engine began to run rough and lost power. The pilot turned right to avoid obstacles, and the engine lost all power. The pilot then attempted a forced landing to a field, but the airspeed decreased, and the rate of descent increased. The airplane's nosegear impacted a down-sloping field. During the impact, the left wing sustained substantial damage from a tree strike, and the airplane came to rest upright in the field. Approximately 4 ounces of fluid was recovered from the carburetor, of which about 3 1/2 ounces was consistent with water, while 1/2 ounce was fuel.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight inspection, which resulted in a total loss of engine power during takeoff due to fuel contamination, and a subsequent forced landing to a field.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC06LA028
- Event ID
- 20051118X01857
- Case number
- NYC06LA028
- 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: 1221a2984bef957903350a6ce376b8d8cc2e7b56cbf55a78ee6aa2892947b5a5; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:15:08.594Z.