ANC14FA002 · Cessna 172C
Cessna 172C · Accident: loss of engine power (total) during initial climb
From Fairbanks International Airport (FAI) to North Pole, AK
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC14FA002
- 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
- 1 · 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 172C
- 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
- N1512Y
- Operator
- Jon D. Tanner · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fairbanks International Airport (FAI), Fairbanks, AKTo North Pole, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 51 years (built 1962)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was departing on a short cross-country flight to deliver the airplane for some elective maintenance. He requested and received clearance for an intersection departure. After departure, an air traffic controller instructed the pilot to turn left and proceed on course, but the pilot did not respond. Controllers reported observing the airplane initiating a left turn before descending and impacting terrain on the south side of the airport property.
Postaccident examinations of the airplane revealed no mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. However, the examinations did reveal propeller signatures consistent with the engine not producing power at the time of impact. About 2 gallons of what appeared to be 100LL aviation fuel was drained from the right fuel tank and about 0.5 gallon of fuel was drained from the left fuel tank at the accident site. The drained fuel was clean, and no water was present. The carburetor fuel bowl was removed, and it contained only a small amount of fuel. The accelerator pump was actuated by hand, and it did not discharge fuel. No fuel leakage was noted at the accident site. Given the amount of fuel removed from the airplane at the accident site and the propeller signatures consistent with a lack of power, it is likely that the loss of engine power resulted from fuel exhaustion.
A Boeing 737 (737) airplane departed the parallel runway about 1 minute 45 seconds before the accident airplane departed. Although it is possible that wake turbulence existed in the 737's departure corridor, no evidence was found indicating that the accident airplane experienced wake turbulence.
Toxicological testing revealed that the pilot had a significant amount of glucose in his urine and an elevated Hemoglobin A1C level, indicating that he had diabetes. Family members reported that the pilot was not actively being treated for the condition. The pilot's actual glucose level at the time of the accident could not be determined; however, based on the available evidence, it is unlikely that the pilot was acutely incapacitated by his diabetes at the time of the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to ensure that adequate fuel was on board the airplane, which resulted in fuel exhaustion and a subsequent collision with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC14FA002
- Event ID
- 20131018X32710
- Case number
- ANC14FA002
- 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 2013-10-18.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 0ee778b56ae915d79a7169ae6c10faa180e985594c106bf81d7155f6762034db; retrieved 2026-09-14T16:05:12.161Z.