WPR16LA094 · Cessna 182A A
Cessna 182A A · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Carlsbad, CA to Madera, CA
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR16LA094
- 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 182A A
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- N9909B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Carlsbad, CATo Madera, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 59 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Following an uneventful flight, the flight instructor and student pilot began a descent toward an airport where they intended to refuel the airplane. The flight instructor reported that, during the descent, the engine lost power. After notifying air traffic control, they received vectors to the nearest airport. Despite multiple attempts, the flight instructor was unable to restart the engine. He realized that the airplane would not be able to reach the airport, so he initiated a forced landing to an open sand- and dirt-covered field. During the landing roll, the airplane nosed over. The flight instructor reported that he did not use carburetor heat during the descent.
During examination of the airplane, the fuel strainer valve was stuck in the open position and the valve and the mixture metering sleeve were contaminated with sandlike debris, which likely entered the system during the accident sequence. The debris was removed. The fuel strainer valve then closed, indicating the impact sequence caused it to open. The carburetor was reassembled and reinstalled on the engine, and the engine started and ran continuously at various power settings until it was shut off using the mixture control.
Recovery personnel noted that each wing fuel tank contained less than 2 quarts of fuel; the wings were not breached. Fuel burn calculations revealed that the airplane would have used 43.5 gallons of fuel after the airplane was topped off with fuel about 1 hour before the flight and should have had about 21.5 gallons of fuel remaining (the two tanks had a total capacity of 65 gallons), 18.5 gallons of which would have been usable. It could not be determined why only about 2 quarts of fuel remained in each wing tank.
Weather conditions in the area at the time of the accident were conducive to the formation of carburetor icing at glide and cruise power. It is likely that the flight instructor's failure to use carburetor heat during the descent resulted in the accumulation of carburetor icing and subsequent total loss of engine power.
Probable cause
The total loss of engine power due to carburetor icing, which resulted from the flight instructor's failure to use carburetor heat during the descent.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR16LA094
- Event ID
- 20160420X30248
- Case number
- WPR16LA094
- 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 2016-04-19.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 2e3ab59860ca72b075e2c478847e72f9914fdbeff1613ed42057f42b551670fa; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:18:46.072Z.