DFW08LA210 · Cessna 182
Cessna 182 · Accident: fuel related en route
From Sugar Land Regional Airport (SGR) to Waco Regional Airport (ACT)
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW08LA210
- 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 182
- 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
- N92780
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sugar Land Regional Airport (SGR), Houston, TXTo Waco Regional Airport (ACT), Waco, TX
- 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
- 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
- Fuel related
- 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 systems
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- 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 cross-country flight, the single-engine airplane lost engine power. The pilot elected to conduct a forced landing to a nearby airport. During the approach, the airplane impacted a light pole and crashed into a ball field near the airport. The on-site investigation found that the right wing fuel cap was located on the ground near the airplane's wing; the left wing's fuel cap was in place. Additionally, blue fuel streaks were found on the fuselage's right side behind the rear fuselage window and below the right horizontal stabilator. An inspection of the engine failed to identify any abnormalities that would have prevented normal operation. Prior to its departure from a previous airport, the airplane was filled with approximately 24 gallons of fuel. An airport security camera recorded the airplane being refueled. The security video showed that the pilot, after refueling, did not put the right wing's fuel cap back on. The fuel "streaking" is consistent with (blue) 100LL aviation fuel being siphoned from the fuel tank during flight, leading to the loss of fuel.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power in flight due to fuel exhaustion as a result of the pilot's failure to secure the right wing's fuel cap, leading to fuel being siphoned from the tank during flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW08LA210
- Event ID
- 20080915X01461
- Case number
- DFW08LA210
- 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: 7f64613e0e7627102cf4fb792124af0841546934363e7799b329f685d0ede901; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:13:00.160Z.