ERA15LA363 · Cessna 172E E
Cessna 172E E · Accident: loss of engine power (total) while maneuvering
From Lykens Valley Flying Association Airport (34PA) to Lykens Valley Flying Association Airport (34PA)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA15LA363
- 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
- 0
- 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 172E E
- 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
- N3647S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lykens Valley Flying Association Airport (34PA), Gettysburg, PATo Lykens Valley Flying Association Airport (34PA), Gettysburg, PA
- Aircraft age
- About 52 years (built 1963)
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot, who was also the airplane owner, was conducting a local personal flight. About 30 minutes after takeoff, during a descent from 3,000 to 1,500 ft mean sea level, the airplane experienced a total loss of engine power; the pilot then attempted a forced landing to a grass field. The airplane's approach speed was too fast for landing and the airplane overflew the selected field, eventually impacting trees at the edge of an adjacent field.
Subsequent examination of the airframe and engine revealed no evidence of any preimpact mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. Before the accident flight, the airplane had been stored for an extended period with automotive fuel in the tanks. Although long-term storage with automotive fuel can lead to varnish or gum deposits that may block or restrict fuel flow, the newly-replaced carburetor was found full of fuel with no foreign material or deposits present, and fuel was observed to flow freely from the fuel tanks to the carburetor during postaccident testing. The weather conditions at the time of the accident were conducive to the formation of serious carburetor icing at glide engine power settings when using aviation-grade gasoline. Given that the use of automotive gasoline is known to result in the formation of carburetor icing at higher ambient temperature and lower humidity conditions than aviation gasoline, it is likely that the loss of engine power was the result of carburetor icing.
Probable cause
The total loss of engine power due to carburetor icing. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's failure to maintain a proper approach speed during the forced landing, which resulted in impact with trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA15LA363
- Event ID
- 20150920X40915
- Case number
- ERA15LA363
- 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: 3461536d6ef785d882de90485ad680f5a6ee31702c1b9abcd890f1ade2ef2817; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:47:23.906Z.