CHI07CA263 · Cessna 180
Cessna 180 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From La Crosse Regional Airport (LSE) to Princeton Municipal Airport (PNM)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI07CA263
- 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 180
- 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
- N2311C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From La Crosse Regional Airport (LSE), La Crosse, WITo Princeton Municipal Airport (PNM), Princeton, MN
- 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 › Aircraft preflight, inadequate
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 sustained substantial damage during a forced landing to a field after the loss of engine power during cruise. The pilot reported that he had stopped at an en route airport to refuel prior to continuing to his final destination airport. He had the lineman at the fixed base operator add 7 gallons of fuel to each wing tank for a total of 14 gallons. The pilot reported that the lineman placed the fueling ladder on his truck and the pilot went in to pay the bill. The pilot did not check the tanks or the fuel caps after the lineman had added the fuel. The pilot reported that he departed and approximately 1:05 hours of flight later, the airplane's engine stopped running. He reported the fuel indicators showed empty on the left tank, but 1/2 or better on the right tank. The fuel selector was in the BOTH position. He executed a forced landing to a soybean field, but the field was too short and the airplane became airborne again before landing hard in a field. The inspection of the airplane revealed that the right fuel door was open and the filler cap was off and dangling by the chain attached to the filler neck. A fuel stain was observed that went from the filler neck to the trailing edge of the right flap. The left and right fuel tanks were empty.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion as a result of the pilot's inadequate preflight. A factor was the fuel siphoning from the right fuel tank.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI07CA263
- Event ID
- 20071107X01752
- Case number
- CHI07CA263
- 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 2007-08-11.
- API snapshot SHA-256: a037bed3029887c9dfb2ab4e88277129482485893964817fe6f43009e3b89af5; retrieved 2026-09-21T18:25:32.287Z.