WPR09CA113 · Cessna 172D
Captain Kurt'S Tug & Barge Inc Dba Cessna 172D · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Bellingham International Airport (KBLI) to Skagit Regional Airport (KBVS)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR09CA113
- 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 172D
- 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
- N2404Y
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bellingham International Airport (KBLI), Bellingham, WATo Skagit Regional Airport (KBVS), Burlington, WA
- 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
- 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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of the single-engine airplane reported that he was on the final leg (approximately 10 minutes after takeoff) of a multi-segment cross-country flight when the engine stopped producing power. The pilot was unable to restart the engine and landed in a field near the destination airport. During the landing roll, the airplane collided with a ditch. The pilot stated that prior to the final leg of the cross-country flight the airplane fuel quantity indicators read "just under" 1/2 and 1/8 full. He added that he did not visually inspect the fuel quantity in the fuel tanks during the preflight inspection. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed structural damage to the firewall. The fuel system, including the fuel tanks, was intact and no leaks were observed. An airframe and powerplant mechanic who recovered the wreckage reported that there was no fuel in the left tank and approximately 3/4 of a gallon of fuel in the right fuel tank. No preaccident mechanical deficiencies with the airframe or engine were noted.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion as a result of the pilot's inadequate preflight inspection and failure to verify the fuel quantity on board.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR09CA113
- Event ID
- 20090209X44822
- Case number
- WPR09CA113
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2009-02-09.
- API snapshot SHA-256: e68836f5e66aabea19a904fa0418a15fbca1b4ae0cfea9407e38bd0ea059abd6; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:44:23.093Z.