ERA11CA419 · Cessna 177
Cessna 177 · Accident: fuel exhaustion en route
From Jimmy Carter Regional Airport (ACJ) to Jimmy Carter Regional Airport (ACJ)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA11CA419
- 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 177
- 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
- N30214
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Jimmy Carter Regional Airport (ACJ), Americus, GATo Jimmy Carter Regional Airport (ACJ), Americus, GA
- 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
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- 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
According to the certified flight instructor (CFI), he and the pilot departed the airport for a local, personal flight. While returning to the airport, the engine surged and then lost power. The CFI assumed control of the airplane and selected a suitable landing area for a forced landing. During the landing, after clearing a 50-foot-tall tree line, the right wing and nose wheel impacted the ground resulting in substantial damage to the wing spar and firewall. A postaccident examination revealed that both fuel tanks were empty. The CFI reported there were no preexisting mechanical anomalies with the airplane and that he did not perform a preflight of the airplane prior to the flight nor did he check the fuel level.
Probable cause
The CFI and pilot's improper fuel management, 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 ERA11CA419
- Event ID
- 20110725X34708
- Case number
- ERA11CA419
- 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, coordinates. 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: 5b4c0020154969b1859c8dbdf40476d656fbf7d0419c2cb2af03498f5c6dd871; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:30:13.263Z.