WPR10CA311 · Cessna 172F F
Low Flying Angels Cessna 172F F · Accident: fuel exhaustion on approach
From Hanford Municipal Airport (KHJO) to Sacramento Mather Airport (KMHR)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR10CA311
- 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 172F F
- 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
- N8793U
- Operator
- Low Flying Angels
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hanford Municipal Airport (KHJO), Hanford, CATo Sacramento Mather Airport (KMHR), Sacramento, CA
- 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
- 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 exhaustion
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that when he was about 7 miles from his intended destination the engine began to run rough and lost all power about one minute later. He unsuccessfully attempted to restart the engine multiple times. The pilot decided to try to land at a closer airport but realized he would not be able to make it to that airport, either, so he elected to land in an open field. During landing the airplane bounced and the right wing collided with a tree, which spun the airplane around. The airplane sustained substantial damage to both wings. Local fire department first responders reported that when they arrived on scene there were no fuel leaks and there was no odor of fuel present on-scene. They attempted to drain fuel from the sump but no fuel came out. A Federal Aviation Administration inspector examined the airplane and reported that there was no fuel at the selector valve or in the wing tanks. The pilot stated that "... adding additional fuel in excess of [the] perceived minimum fuel level would likely have avoided [the] power loss...."
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power in flight due to fuel exhaustion as a result of the pilot's inadequate fuel planning.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR10CA311
- Event ID
- 20100624X81358
- Case number
- WPR10CA311
- 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, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2010-07-08.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ef4b254391e163d615b95b21509168626e6262bb81c548fcf9b897562965a972; retrieved 2026-09-15T14:29:55.306Z.