WPR14LA208 · Cessna 182P
Cessna 182P · Accident: fuel related en route
From Eastern Sierra Regional Airport (KBIH) to Los Banos Municipal Airport (KLSN)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR14LA208
- 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 182P
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- N21048
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Eastern Sierra Regional Airport (KBIH), Bishop, CATo Los Banos Municipal Airport (KLSN), Los Banos, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 42 years (built 1972)
- 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 · cruise
- 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 related
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot reported that the airplane was in cruise flight at 12,500 ft mean sea level (msl) when he noticed a partial loss of engine power and that the No. 1 cylinder exhaust gas temperature had dropped from 1,450 to 1,300 degrees F. The pilot diverted to an airport about 10 miles away; however, the engine then experienced a total loss of power about 4,000 ft above ground level. The airplane was unable to reach the airport, so the pilot performed a forced landing on a dirt road, during which the firewall was substantially damaged and the right main landing gear collapsed.
A postaccident engine test run at various power settings revealed no mechanical failures or malfunctions that would have precluded normal operation. Weather conditions at the time of the accident at the airplane's cruise altitude of 12,500 ft msl were conducive to the formation of carburetor icing at glide and cruise power. During the on-site examination of the wreckage, the carburetor heat control was found in the "off" position. It is likely that the engine lost power due to carburetor ice and that the timely application of carburetor heat would have restored engine power.
Probable cause
The total loss of engine power due to carburetor icing, which resulted from the pilot’s failure to use carburetor heat in cruise flight while operating in an area conducive to carburetor icing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR14LA208
- Event ID
- 20140524X94635
- Case number
- WPR14LA208
- 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: 00ae8cff1abbfe57d9194d9556702ebe827c96b189af99262eabaf8cbf3843ce; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:39:52.035Z.