ERA12CA546 · Cessna 172M
Cessna 172M · Accident: fuel starvation while maneuvering
From Samuels Field (BRY) to Samuels Field (BRY)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA12CA546
- 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 172M
- 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
- N21214
- Operator
- Spalding Harry S
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Samuels Field (BRY), Bardstown, KYTo Samuels Field (BRY), Bardstown, KY
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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 starvation
- 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 systems
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the flight instructor, he and the student pilot had practiced various maneuvers during the training flight and were returning to the airport. The airplane was about 2,500 feet above ground level and within gliding distance of the airport when the flight instructor turned the fuel selector to the "OFF" position so the student pilot could practice engine failure procedures. (Although no regulations prohibit turning the fuel selector to the off position while practicing engine failure procedures, the practice results in an actual, not a simulated, loss of engine power, and is therefore inherently more risky than a reduction in engine power to idle, especially when initiated at a low altitude.) The student pilot trimmed the airplane for best glide speed, initiated a turn toward the airport, and reviewed the pertinent emergency procedure guidance in the pilot operating handbook. The student pilot could not locate the airport until the flight instructor directed him. When the student pilot was unable to restart the engine, the flight instructor took control of the airplane and tried to restart the engine. The flight instructor’s efforts to restart the engine were also unsuccessful, and, believing it was too risky to try to reach the airport, the flight instructor selected the best available field for a forced landing. During the landing, the nose landing gear impacted the ground and the firewall was substantially damaged. The student pilot, who was also a mechanic, reported that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal engine restart and operation.
Probable cause
The flight instructor's decision to turn the fuel selector to the off position and his delayed remedial actions to restart the engine, which resulted in fuel starvation and a subsequent forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA12CA546
- Event ID
- 20120906X03759
- Case number
- ERA12CA546
- 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: 0ab1163abde0c8193b9eb22ca93af51e29826e3bc55a79b1ae1e1f78883ee519; retrieved 2026-09-15T19:43:01.379Z.