CEN16FA083 · Cessna 172N
Cessna 172N · Accident: fuel exhaustion on approach
From Sulphur Springs Municipal Airport (SLR) to Fox Stephens Field Gilmer Municipal Airport (JXI)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN16FA083
- 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
- 1 · 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 172N
- 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
- N737EZ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sulphur Springs Municipal Airport (SLR), Sulphur Springs, TXTo Fox Stephens Field Gilmer Municipal Airport (JXI), Gilmer, TX
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot and one passenger departed on the approximate 35-minute personal flight with an unknown quantity of fuel onboard. Later that evening, they departed to return to their home airport in night visual meteorological conditions without adding additional fuel during their stop. While on final approach to their home airport, the engine lost total power and the airplane impacted trees and terrain. The passenger stated that the engine did not sound any different during the accident flight than on any of the previous flights and that there was no indication of a problem with the airplane when the engine lost power. Postaccident examination of the wreckage revealed no usable fuel within the airplane's fuel system, and no mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operation; therefore, it is likely that the airplane experienced a total loss of engine power as a result of fuel exhaustion. While it is unknown what preflight fuel planning the pilot performed and the extent of his preflight inspection, it is apparent that both were inadequate; had he performed both properly, he likely would not have run out of fuel.
Recorded GPS data showed that the pilot flew the traffic pattern 400-600 ft lower than the recommended 1,000-ft above airport elevation and turned to the base leg of the traffic pattern farther from the runway than recommended. Had the pilot flown the traffic pattern at the recommended altitude and distance from the runway, it may have been possible for the airplane to glide to the runway following the loss of engine power.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight planning and inspection, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's failure to maintain an appropriate traffic pattern altitude and distance from the runway, which may have allowed the airplane to glide to the runway following the loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN16FA083
- Event ID
- 20160113X10123
- Case number
- CEN16FA083
- 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 2016-01-13.
- API snapshot SHA-256: d329fdbc9fe5d8db68bc6e7ea4bf2a78cb269fbd35c56426d0053375330e6129; retrieved 2026-09-14T21:37:36.370Z.