GAA16CA259 · Cessna 182 A
Extreme Source Cessna 182 A · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Preston Airport (U10) to Reno Tahoe International Airport (RNO)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA16CA259
- 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 182 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
- N4793D
- Operator
- Extreme Source
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Preston Airport (U10), Preston, IDTo Reno Tahoe International Airport (RNO), Reno, NV
- Aircraft age
- About 58 years (built 1958)
- 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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the Federal Aviation Administration, Aviation Safety Inspector that arrived at the scene shortly after the accident, he located the uninjured pilot in command (PIC) and a passenger rated pilot who were the only occupants of the airplane. The inspector reported that the PIC told him that he had fueled the airplane prior to the flight. The PIC told the inspector that he had flown 2.5 hours on the right tank which indicated 3.9 gallons of fuel remained per the electronic fuel quantity indicator, at which time he switched to the left tank which indicated 15 gallons of fuel remained per the electronic fuel quantity indicator. The PIC reported to the inspector thatafter switching tanks the engine ran for an additional five minutes and ceased operation. The PIC told the inspector that he contacted air traffic control (ATC) stating that he had experienced an "engine failure", and that they would not make it to the nearest airport. The pilot landed the airplane on a highway five miles from the destination airport. During the landing the nose gear collapsed and the airplane sustained substantial damage to the firewall.
During a post-accident examination of the airplane by the FAA Inspector, there wasn't any usable fuel found in the left or right fuel tanks, and the paved surface where the airplane landed did not contain any evidence of fuel spillage.
The airplane landed 5 miles from the nearest airport. The pilot's destination airport was 17.5 nautical miles southwest of the accident site. The distance between the departure airport and the destination airport was about 415 nautical miles. According to the pilot operating handbook, the range of the accident airplane is 880 nautical miles.
The NTSB Investigator contacted the fixed base operator who reportedly fueled the airplane prior to the flight in order to acquire the fuel records. The operator did not have any fuel records for the accident airplane.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate fuel planning, resulting in fuel exhaustion and substantial damage to the firewall during the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA16CA259
- Event ID
- 20160525X15244
- Case number
- GAA16CA259
- 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: 23376f0df0ccc5686345eecf44b2f976f0270a15fc8328ceb7a95e10de6ebe0e; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:26:00.840Z.