WPR10LA001 · Cessna 180
Cessna 180 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Pistol Creek, ID (private airstrip) to Roberts Field (RDM)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR10LA001
- 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
- N1621C
- Operator
- William Gonce
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pistol Creek, ID (private airstrip)To Roberts Field (RDM), Redmond, OR
- 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 › Experience/knowledge
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The single engine airplane experienced a loss of engine power during flight and the pilot performed a forced landing in rugged terrain. Examination of the airplane wreckage revealed minimal evidence of fuel. The airplane had a modified fuel tank system through a supplemental type certificate (STC). The STC changed the fuel capacity of the two fuel tanks from 30 gallons to 28.2 gallons each. The installation information for the STC noted that to determine the usable fuel for the airplane, the airplane’s type certificate data sheet (TCDS) should be referenced and the unusable fuel amount listed therein should be subtracted from the new total fuel capacity. The TCDS for the airplane stated that 5 gallons of fuel were unusable, which made the new total usable fuel capacity on the airplane 51.4 gallons. As a part of the STC, the airplane flight manual (AFM) and the fuel selector valve placard were to be updated with the revised usable fuel quantity. This action was noted on the FAA Form 337 for the STC installation. The pilot had purchased the airplane several years prior to the accident and the previous owner told him that all of the fuel (56.4 gallons) was usable. The pilot reported that there was no AFM supplement for the STC included in his paperwork, and that he did not ever look at the quantities indicated on the fuel selector valve placard in the cockpit due to its location between the seats. Examination of the recovered airframe and engine components revealed no evidence of preimpact mechanical malfunction.
Probable cause
The pilot’s lack of understanding of the airplane’s fuel system, which resulted in a loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR10LA001
- Event ID
- 20091002X11005
- Case number
- WPR10LA001
- 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: 13ca77625f47ab9fb59da80b44d872fcf9e39ee38fcfe30f4549e96b0582f92b; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:22:08.924Z.