CHI07CA202 · Cessna 172N
Noble Flight Cessna 172N · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Olive Branch Airport (OLV) to Aurora Municipal Airport (ARR)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI07CA202
- 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 172N
- 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
- N738SV
- Operator
- Noble Flight
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Olive Branch Airport (OLV), Olive Branch, MSTo Aurora Municipal Airport (ARR), CHICAGO/AURORA, IL
- 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
- 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 › Fuel consumption calculations, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Unsuitable terrain or takeoff/landing/taxi area, encountered
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 impacted terrain during a forced landing following a total loss of engine power during cruise flight. Night visual meteorological conditions prevailed at the time of the accident. The pilot stated that when he had the destination airport in sight, the left fuel gauge indicated empty and the right fuel gauge indicated "just below 1/4 tank." The engine then lost power and he was unable to restart it. The pilot executed a forced landing on a "dark spot" on the ground and airplane impacted trees. Examination of the airplane fuel tanks revealed no usable fuel aboard.
Probable cause
The inadequate fuel consumption calculations by the pilot, the fuel exhaustion during cruise flight, and the unsuitable landing area encountered by the pilot. Contributing factors were the night light conditions and trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI07CA202
- Event ID
- 20071011X01544
- Case number
- CHI07CA202
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2007-06-30.
- API snapshot SHA-256: eb29cf014353fce5f0f52db396ae620703d114feb9bd8b846b0cfc434c415496; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:42:28.649Z.