ERA14LA434 · Cessna 172P
Liao Aviation Cessna 172P · Accident: fuel exhaustion on approach
From Spruce Creek Airport (7FL6) to Spruce Creek Airport (7FL6)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA14LA434
- 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 172P
- 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
- N63835
- Operator
- Liao Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Spruce Creek Airport (7FL6), Spruce Creek, FLTo Spruce Creek Airport (7FL6), Spruce Creek, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 33 years (built 1981)
- 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 › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor and pilot receiving instruction departed on a training flight, and the pilot stated that the fuel tanks were "almost full." After 3 hours 24 minutes of flight, which included three full-power takeoffs and climbs, the engine experienced a total loss of power on final approach to the destination airport. According to Federal Aviation Administration air traffic control records, multiple one-leg flight plans were filed for the flight. Based on this information, the estimated fuel endurance was 3 hours 20 minutes.
The pilot receiving instruction stated that the fuel selector was in the "both" position throughout the flight but that, on final approach, he noticed that the fuel selector had been switched to the "right" tank position, so he moved the fuel selector back to the "both" position. Shortly thereafter, the engine stopped producing power. The flight instructor stated that the pilot inadvertently selected the "off" position instead of the "both" position when he moved the fuel selector from the "right" tank position.
During the subsequent forced landing, the airplane's cabin and fuselage were damaged, but both wing fuel tanks remained intact. No signs of in-flight or postaccident fuel leakage were found. Postaccident examination showed that the left wing tank contained no fuel and that the right wing tank contained about 3 gallons of fuel. A test run of the engine was performed following the accident using the fuel found in the right wing tank. The engine started immediately, accelerated smoothly, and ran continuously with no anomalies observed. According to the airplane manufacturer, the airplane's fuel tanks had a total capacity of 43 gallons, of which 3 gallons were unusable. Based on this information, it is likely that the pilots exhausted all of the usable fuel during the flight, which resulted in a total loss of engine power on final approach to their destination airport.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion, which resulted from the pilots’ improper preflight and in-flight fuel planning.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA14LA434
- Event ID
- 20140911X33952
- Case number
- ERA14LA434
- 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 2014-09-11.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 639dcb8b2797276ec21ec8115e8d2f32ade08d7ca573f2848bec2db534908d11; retrieved 2026-09-16T01:44:52.606Z.