WPR15LA191 · Cessna 180A
Cessna 180A · Accident: loss of engine power (total) on approach
From Cavanaugh Bay Airport (66S) to Polson Airport (8S1)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR15LA191
- 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 180A
- 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
- N9699B
- Operator
- Schantz Matthew T
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cavanaugh Bay Airport (66S), COOLIN, IDTo Polson Airport (8S1), Polson, MT
- Aircraft age
- About 58 years (built 1957)
- 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
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, while the airplane was on approach and about 3 miles from the airport, the engine lost all power. The pilot continued the descent while maintaining the best glide airspeed and performing the engine restart procedures, which included applying carburetor heat. Despite the pilot's efforts, the engine would not restart, and he initiated a forced landing to a small field. During the landing, the landing gear collapsed, and the right wing impacted terrain. Postaccident examination of the engine and airframe revealed no mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
About the time of the accident, a weather reporting facility located 37 nautical miles north of the accident site recorded a temperature and dew point that were conducive to the accumulation of carburetor icing at glide power. However, it could not be determined whether carburetor ice caused the power loss.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power during approach for reasons that could not be determined because postaccident examination revealed no anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR15LA191
- Event ID
- 20150619X71456
- Case number
- WPR15LA191
- 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: 06a21cf12b29052da9b080bf23f0586d5ef49c5dd115377ca36c8aaf65374904; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:26:33.477Z.