CEN14LA347 · Cessna 172H
Cessna 172H · Accident: fuel exhaustion on approach
From Baytown Airport (HPY) to Baytown Airport (HPY)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN14LA347
- 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 172H
- 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
- N3732R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Baytown Airport (HPY), Baytown, TXTo Baytown Airport (HPY), Baytown, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 48 years (built 1966)
- 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 go-around
- 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 › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot and two passengers completed a 45-minute local sightseeing flight at night, then returned to the airport for a touch-and-go landing. About 400 ft above ground level after takeoff, the engine experienced a total loss of power. The pilot maneuvered the airplane for a forced landing in a flat, clear area of a city park. As the airplane descended, the right wing impacted a set of electrical transmission wires. The pilot lost control and the airplane impacted terrain, where it came to rest inverted.
An on-scene examination of the wreckage showed no evidence of fuel. Examination of the airplane and engine revealed no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or anomalies that would have prevented normal operation. The pilot reported that he had last fueled the airplane more than 6 months before the accident; he estimated that a total of 32 gallons of fuel was onboard at that time. He also estimated that the airplane had been flown about 2 hours 20 minutes since refueling, and that there should have been about 45 minutes of fuel remaining at the time of the accident. Data from the airplane's hand-held GPS showed that within the previous 6 months, the device had recorded flights totaling about 4 hours. Thus, the engine lost power due to fuel exhaustion as a result of the pilot's failure to verify the available fuel before the accident flight.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to verify the fuel onboard before the flight, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN14LA347
- Event ID
- 20140708X21342
- Case number
- CEN14LA347
- 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 2014-07-08.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 0e37693e09bedadf77592e680faa0cab2ce9d5683bcb47876209bab8bae4bf7a; retrieved 2026-09-16T00:51:06.527Z.