LAX07LA216 · Cessna 180A
Cessna 180A · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) on approach
From Grants Pass Airport (3S8) to Benton Field (O85)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX07LA216
- 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 180A
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 180
- 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
- N5248D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Grants Pass Airport (3S8), Grants Pass, ORTo Benton Field (O85), Redding, 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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 › In-flight planning/decision, inadequate
- 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 personal cross-country flight departed from Arlington, Washington, and briefly stopped in Grants Pass, Oregon, departing about 1100 for a final destination of Redding. While on a 2.5-mile final approach to the destination airport, the engine experienced a loss of engine power and the pilot performed an emergency landing in a field. The airplane collided with a berm during the landing roll. Just prior to the loss of power, the right fuel tank was empty and the left fuel tank had about 6 gallons of fuel remaining; the fuel selector was positioned on the "both" selection. According to the airplane's Owner's Manual, 5 gallons of fuel is unusable per tank in non-level flight. The pilot did not refuel while en route.
Probable cause
Fuel exhaustion due to the pilot's inadequate in-flight planning/decision concerning fuel system management and his failure to refuel while en route.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX07LA216
- Event ID
- 20070730X01045
- Case number
- LAX07LA216
- 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: 127e8aa352b4078fb8a885570d64773cf0d3b5244a644944309b394455ecba22; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:39:57.439Z.