ANC17LA028 · Cessna 172 I
Cessna 172 I · Accident: fuel related en route
From Sixmile Lake Airport (AA06) to Sixmile Lake Airport (AA06)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC17LA028
- 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 172 I
- 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
- N35700
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sixmile Lake Airport (AA06), Anchorage, AKTo Sixmile Lake Airport (AA06), Anchorage, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 49 years (built 1968)
- 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
- Fuel related
- 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 › Psychological
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, about 1 hour after takeoff on the personal flight, the engine started "sputtering" and then lost all power. The pilot was unable to restart the engine and maneuvered the airplane for landing at a nearby airport. The airplane subsequently touched down in an open field, impacted a fence, and came to rest inverted in the grass, resulting in substantial damage. During recovery of the airplane, about 1 gallon of fuel was drained from the left wing and about 7.5 gallons of fuel were drained from the right wing. Examination revealed no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airframe or engine. The engine was satisfactorily test run several times during the examination. The fuel injector servo successfully passed a flow check and showed no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures. Various fuel samples from the airplane were tested and no water was detected. The pilot initially reported that the fuel selector valve was positioned at the left tank position when the engine started experiencing issues, but later reported that he was using the right tank position during the engine issues. Given the airplane's fuel state following the accident and the lack of anomalies found during postaccident examination, it is likely that the loss of engine power was the result of fuel starvation when the pilot exhausted the fuel supply of the left wing tank.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper in-flight fuel management, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC17LA028
- Event ID
- 20170607X64827
- Case number
- ANC17LA028
- 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 2017-06-06.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 76da4c433d0439631c614cef4d08fb6024fd30b08155a925d880328d8f8e89af; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:22:46.705Z.