WPR14LA042 · Cessna 180
Cessna 180 · Accident: fuel exhaustion on approach
From Dalhart Municipal Airport (DHT) to St Johns Industrial Air Park (KSJN)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR14LA042
- 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 180
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 180
- 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
- N3148C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dalhart Municipal Airport (DHT), Dalhart, TXTo St Johns Industrial Air Park (KSJN), St. Johns, AZ
- Aircraft age
- About 59 years (built 1954)
- 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
- 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
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airline transport pilot was conducting a cross-country flight. While on final approach to the destination airport, the airplane experienced a loss of engine power. The pilot subsequently made a forced off-airport landing, which resulted in substantial damage to the fuselage.
During the recovery of the wreckage, no fuel was found in the right wing fuel tank and less than 4 gallons of fuel was found in the left wing fuel tank. The fuel system was intact, and no sign of fuel leakage from either tank was observed. The engine was test run with no anomalies noted. Although the pilot had conducted the flight many times before without incident, given the evidence, it is likely that the pilot did not ensure that adequate fuel was onboard the airplane for this flight, which resulted in fuel exhaustion and the total loss of engine power.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power while on final approach due to fuel exhaustion, which resulted from the pilot’s improper preflight fuel planning.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR14LA042
- Event ID
- 20131104X20938
- Case number
- WPR14LA042
- 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: ef33ade4e71d8383446e62c17488a1f5ed8db16d56b1bea2385a49b2e5c254e4; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:04:49.070Z.