ERA11LA139 · Cessna 182P
Cessna 182P · Accident: fuel contamination on approach
From Morristown Municipal Airport (MMU) to Lincoln Park, NJ
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA11LA139
- 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 182P
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- N25HD
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Morristown Municipal Airport (MMU), Morristown, NJTo Lincoln Park, NJ
- 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 downwind
- 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 contamination
- 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 airplane was descending on the downwind leg of the landing pattern. As the pilot adjusted power to arrest the descent, the engine did not respond. The engine produced two short bursts of power when the pilot used the fuel primer; however, the engine would not continue running. The pilot noted that he was not going to reach the runway as he turned into the final leg of the landing pattern and elected to impact a tree to avoid hitting a building. A postaccident examination of the wreckage did not reveal any mechanical discrepancies that would have prevented normal operation of the airplane or its systems. The engine started, accelerated, and produced rated horsepower when tested.
The postaccident examination found ice and evidence of water in the gascolator fuel bowl shortly after the accident. A recovered engine digital monitor recorded the accident flight and captured the last 25 seconds. The monitor indicated that the fuel flow dropped to zero and the exhaust gas temperature on all cylinders dropped sharply, consistent with ignition stopping abruptly, likely due to the introduction of water into the fuel system.
The engine compartment was heated before the flight, the temperature was minus 5 degrees Celsius at the time of the preflight, and no water was noted when the gascolator was drained before the flight. The accident flight was flown on the left wing fuel tank. The pilot stated that, during the preflight, he had difficulty sumping the left wing fuel tank and noted a few drops of water when the sump valve did function; he did not resump the tank. An Airworthiness Directive (AD) that was established to prevent power loss or engine stoppage due to water contamination had been performed on the airplane. The AD stated that, after rocking the wings, the pilot should "Drain and catch the contents of the fuel gascolator, wing, and (if equipped) reservoir tank sumps and check for water contamination. If water is found...repeat...until no additional water is detected, or drain the entire airplane fuel system." About a week before the accident flight, the airplane was washed inside a hangar and afterward moved to the ramp; it had not been flown since the wash.
Probable cause
The pilot’s inadequate preflight inspection (removal of water contamination from the fuel system), which resulted in a total loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA11LA139
- Event ID
- 20110210X63852
- Case number
- ERA11LA139
- 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: a37d5449f00d86abdcb92a6126c18facba51e41843e3f2d498e52122149c6f23; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:48:01.863Z.