CEN10FA385 · Cessna 177B
N345MT Cessna 177B · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin on approach
From David Jay Perry Airport (1K4) to Gundys Airport (O38)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN10FA385
- 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
- 3 · 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 177B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 177
- 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
- N345MT
- Operator
- N345MT
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From David Jay Perry Airport (1K4), Goldsby, OKTo Gundys Airport (O38), Owasso, OK
- 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
- Aerodynamic stall/spin
- 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 oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot and passengers were on the return leg of a cross-country flight. Witnesses reported seeing the airplane approach the airfield in a left turn before losing altitude in a spin. The airplane impacted the ground in a left-wing and nose-low attitude just north and slightly east of the runway. Two witnesses added that the airplane was quiet as it approached the airport; a third witness thought the airplane’s engine was “cutting in-and-out”.
A postaccident examination revealed that both wing tanks were intact and contained no fuel. The grass area underneath each fuel tank did not indicate fuel contamination or fuelblight. The firewall fuel strainer, which sustained impact damage, was absent debris and fuel. The carburetor received impact damage and two of its front attachment bolts were broken. The carburetor’s fuel bowl drain plug was removed and contained only a few drops of fuel. Inspection of the engine and propeller revealed the absence of power signatures. Examination of the engine and airframe revealed no evidence of a mechanical malfunction prior to the accident.
The accident is consistent with the airplane entering a stall/spin as a result of the pilot allowing the airspeed to decay in an attempt to reach the runway in an engine-out situation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain adequate airspeed during an engine-out approach to the runway, resulting in an aerodynamic stall and spin. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s inadequate preflight planning, 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 CEN10FA385
- Event ID
- 20100712X94607
- Case number
- CEN10FA385
- 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 2010-07-12.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 5f221075fa2b81313872bf0eeed2eddaa04b73f65c226f82bb71253a02cb003f; retrieved 2026-09-13T20:56:56.270Z.