ATL06CA016 · Cessna 177
Cessna 177 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) on approach
From Mount Olive Municipal Airport (W40) to Coastal Carolina Regional Airport (EWN)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL06CA016
- 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 177
- 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
- N821KF
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mount Olive Municipal Airport (W40), Mount Olive, NCTo Coastal Carolina Regional Airport (EWN), New Bern, NC
- 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 · IFR final 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)
- 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, not used
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 was on an instrument flight rules flight. The controller cleared the pilot for a VOR runway 22 approach at the destination airport. The pilot initiated a descent and did not apply carburetor heat. The Let-Down procedures in the checklist states, "Carburetor Heat-AS REQUIRED to prevent carburetor icing." Upon reaching the minimum descent altitude for the approach, the pilot increased the throttle and did not get an engine response. The pilot realized he could not make the runway and made a forced landing into a river. The surface weather observation at the destination airport revealed the temperature was 75-degrees Fahrenheit and the dew point temperature was 61-degrees Fahrenheit. Review of the Department of Transportation Icing Probability Chart indicates the airplane will encounter serious icing conditions at glide power. The engine was mounted in a test stand and an alternate fuel, and battery source was attached. Engine controls, and magneto grounding wires were installed. The mixture control was safetied wired in the full rich position. The engine was started and ran at idle power. After engine warm up the throttle was advanced to full power and the engine stabilized at takeoff rpm of 2,000. The throttle was returned back to the idle position, the safety wire on the mixture was cut, and the engine was shut down with the mixture control.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to activate the carburetor heat during approach resulting in a total loss of engine power due to carburetor ice.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL06CA016
- Event ID
- 20051209X01957
- Case number
- ATL06CA016
- 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: 6c9b9e5d64848ed68cc040c0040a48ab44e1d7c75e21db5efdc96f4dae8b2372; retrieved 2026-09-21T18:51:35.685Z.