DFW07CA127 · Cessna 182L
Cessna 182L · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Bunkie Municipal Airport (2R6) to 2L0 · Temecula, CA
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW07CA127
- 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 182L
- 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
- N3356R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bunkie Municipal Airport (2R6), Bunkie, LATo 2L0 · Temecula, CA
- 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 · climb to 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
- 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 › Refueling, not performed
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot reported that shortly after takeoff, the engine of his single-engine airplane developed an abnormal fluctuation while climbing through 1,300 feet MSL. As a precaution, the pilot elected to return to the departure airport; however, while turning to the airport, the engine lost power, and he prepared for a forced landing to an open field. Prior to the forced landing, he noticed freshly dug ditches on both side of the field, and he repositioned to an adjacent field to the right of his initial landing spot. The pilot added that the engine began to surge when the airplane was about 300 feet above the ground, which extended his glide. The airplane touched down on soft ground, the tires sunk in, and the airplane nosed-over. Examination of the airplane revealed the fuel bladders in both wings were not breached and there was no evidence of fuel stains around the vented fuel caps. Approximately 1-gallon of light blue fuel was drained from the right tank, and less than 1-gallon of light blue fuel was drained from the left tank. The fuel was free of water and debris. The engine mounted fuel strainer bowl was empty, and the fuel screen was clean. The pilot reported that he did a preflight inspection of the airplane, but did not visually inspect the fuel tanks. Instead he relied on a fuel flow meter installed in the cockpit, which indicated a total of 43.6 gallons. The pilot reported that the gauge was usually accurate, and he was unaware of what happened to the fuel he thought was onboard.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power while climbing due to the pilot's failure to refuel the airplane prior to fuel exhaustion. A factor associated with the accident was the soft terrain at the forced landing site.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW07CA127
- Event ID
- 20070626X00802
- Case number
- DFW07CA127
- 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: 4bc9511f1742d24b1c09bccafd6376a51ea548df0b566b00adeab3521c650df2; retrieved 2026-09-21T18:30:04.371Z.