CEN17LA060 · Cessna 175C C
Cessna 175C C · Accident: loss of engine power (total) on approach
From Davis Airstrip (W50) to Holmes County Airport (10G)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN17LA060
- 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 175C C
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 175
- 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
- N8381T
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Davis Airstrip (W50), Laytonsville, MDTo Holmes County Airport (10G), Millersburg, OH
- Aircraft age
- About 54 years (built 1962)
- 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 · VFR pattern final
- 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
The private pilot was conducting a personal cross-country flight. The pilot reported that, after takeoff, he switched to the left fuel tank for the cruise portion of the flight. He added that, about 5 miles from the destination airport, he completed the Before Landing checklist; however, he "failed to position the fuel selector to [the] both" position at that time, which "set the stage for fuel exhaustion." The engine subsequently lost power. He checked the fuel selector, found that it was still set to the left tank, and moved it to the right tank. He subsequently executed a forced landing to an open area at the base of a hill, during which the airplane impacted a fence and sustained substantial damage to the firewall and right wing. The pilot stated that no mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane preceded the accident. The pilot's failure to move the fuel selector handle to the "both" position in accordance with the Before Landing checklist resulted in the loss of engine power due to fuel starvation.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper in-flight fuel management and his failure to switch the fuel selector to the “both” position in accordance with the Before Landing checklist, which resulted in a loss of engine power due to fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN17LA060
- Event ID
- 20161222X21701
- Case number
- CEN17LA060
- 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: 2bf9da93f45103ee89cf0fc2b89f245db7301356251ae0f8e613925d6e155c5b; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:54:42.004Z.