ERA09LA517 · Cessna 172N
Twin County Aviation Cessna 172N · Accident: loss of engine power (total) on approach
From Mount Airy Surry County Airport (MWK) to Twin County Airport (HLX)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA09LA517
- 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
- N734TV
- Operator
- Twin County Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mount Airy Surry County Airport (MWK), Mount Airy, NCTo Twin County Airport (HLX), Hillsville, VA
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern base
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot stated that, while on the base leg, the engine stopped and she made a forced landing in a field one quarter of a mile from the airport. The carburetor heat was in use at the time of the loss of power. Examination of the airplane by a Federal Aviation Administration inspector revealed that the flight control system components, engine, and system components showed no evidence of preimpact mechanical malfunction. The current ambient temperature was 73 degrees Fahrenheit, with a dew point of 57 degrees Fahrenheit. Review of the carburetor icing probability chart revealed that serious carburetor icing could occur at glide power.
Probable cause
The total loss of engine power for an undetermined reason.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA09LA517
- Event ID
- 20090914X72452
- Case number
- ERA09LA517
- 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. 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: df17ad9eb851e23622d1e121d8f484633f87bd0d2b6f72ff8228115ab3f129eb; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:18:06.988Z.