LAX08LA206 · Cessna 172N
California Flight Academy Cessna 172N · Accident: loss of engine power (total) while maneuvering
From Gillespie Field (SEE) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX08LA206
- 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
- N6360D
- Operator
- California Flight Academy
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Gillespie Field (SEE), El Cajon, CATo not recorded
- 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
- Maneuvering
- Defining eventThe 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
- Loss of engine power (total)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a dual instructional flight, while over a reservoir, the certified flight instructor (CFI) simulated an engine failure by retarding the throttle. After about 1 minute of procedures at idle, the CFI applied power, but the engine did not respond. The CFI performed a forced landing to a field on a ranch. During landing, the left wing tip struck the ground, and the left wing sustained structural damage. The engine operated normally during a post accident test run. The temperature and dew point at the nearest reporting point about 6 nautical miles from the accident site near the time of the accident were recorded as 75 degrees Fahrenheit and 55 degrees Fahrenheit, respectively. Plotting these values on a carburetor icing probability chart indicated that the airplane was operating in the range for serious icing at glide power. According to the operator, the CFI did not apply carburetor heat prior to retarding the throttle during the simulated engine failure.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power due to carburetor ice resulting from the flight instructor's failure to use the carburetor heat when simulating an engine failure. Contributing to the accident were the carburetor icing weather condition and the lack of suitable terrain for the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX08LA206
- Event ID
- 20080702X00973
- Case number
- LAX08LA206
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: 0dfcdbcaf3383402de0e77acdc6a78e8add080a9d20efbe098fa16bc1a0cf22f; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:51:10.014Z.