ATL06LA069 · Cessna 182B
Cessna 182B · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Massey Ranch Airpark (X50) to Kalkaska City Airport (Y89)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL06LA069
- 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 182B
- 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
- N7110E
- Operator
- Anthony W Poniatoski · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Massey Ranch Airpark (X50), New Smyrna Beach, FLTo Kalkaska City Airport (Y89), Kalkaska, MI
- 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; Tree(s)
- 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 › Preflight planning/preparation, improper
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight departed New Smyrna, Florida on the day of the accident at 0845 EDT. At 1131 EDT, a witness stated he observed the airplane flying low over trees and "the pilot was attempting to restart the engine". The airplane collided with the top of a large tree and came to rest upside down on the ground. The witness called 911 and the Hall County Sheriff's Department and Fire Department responded to the accident scene. Fire department personnel stated they did not smell or see any fuel around the crash site. Examination of the airplane by an FAA Inspector showed the left and right main fuel tanks were not breached and did not contain any usable fuel. After recovery of the aircraft from the crash site the engine was operated on the airplane without any evidence of precrash mechanical failure or malfunction. Examination of the airplane fuel system, structure, and flight controls showed no anomalies. Review of the Cessna 182 Owners Manual states on page 1-8, that the left and right main fuel tanks hold 32.5 gallons of fuel of which 27.5 gallons of fuel are useable in all flight conditions. In addition, 3.5 gallons of additional fuel are useable from the left and right main fuel tank in level flight only. According to the "Cruise and Range Performance Chart" in the Cessna 182B Owner's Manual, the aircraft should have used between 23.8 gallons (Maximum Range Setting) and 31.9 gallons (Highest power setting on the chart) of fuel during the flight, if it were flown at 5,000 feet MSL. Review of the approved FAA operator's manual dated July 1981 for the O-470L, revealed in accordance with: Figure-11, at 75% brake horsepower the engine will have a fuel burn rate of 15.4 gallons per hour at sea level, at standard day atmosphere. Available records show the airplane was last fueled on April 17, 2006. It could not be determined if the airplane was flown after this refueling and prior to the accident flight. The amount of fuel onboard the airplane at the time of departure could not be determined.
Probable cause
The pilots improper preflight planning and preparation which resulted in a loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL06LA069
- Event ID
- 20060508X00521
- Case number
- ATL06LA069
- 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: 2331280bf3302adb8cb3aa853fd2aa15af1a33283c2fb44d35bfb1a283b89465; retrieved 2026-09-20T17:22:56.769Z.