ERA13LA291 · Cessna 172S
CAMS Flight Cessna 172S · Accident: loss of engine power (total) on approach
From St. Petersburg Clearwater International Airport (PIE) to St. Petersburg Clearwater International Airport (PIE)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA13LA291
- 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 172S
- 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
- N426SJ
- Operator
- Cams Flight
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From St. Petersburg Clearwater International Airport (PIE), Clearwater, FLTo St. Petersburg Clearwater International Airport (PIE), Clearwater, FL
- 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 final
- 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
- Loss of engine power (total)
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was practicing touch-and-go takeoff and landings. While on the final leg of the traffic pattern for a second landing, the pilot realized that the airspeed was slow and added engine power. The engine did not respond, and, it subsequently experienced a total loss of power. After attempting to restart the engine, the pilot configured the airplane for its best glide speed and chose to land in the grass short of the runway. The airplane touched down in the grass and traveled over the airport perimeter road before coming to rest. Fuel samples obtained from the airplane immediately following the accident revealed no evidence of contamination. Neither postaccident visual examinations nor test runs of the engine revealed any anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined because neither postaccident visual examinations nor test runs of the engine revealed any anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA13LA291
- Event ID
- 20130619X61036
- Case number
- ERA13LA291
- 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: f6d49cdb7e542a4783cd72c00dc80c4d0d133f6c837c2ad6777471bfe1fe17bd; retrieved 2026-09-15T21:57:39.997Z.