GAA17CA361 · Cessna 182 P
Cape Flyers Cessna 182 P · Accident: fuel exhaustion en route
From Skylark Field (ILE) to Cape Girardeau Regional Airport (CGI)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA17CA361
- 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 P
- 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
- N1800M
- Operator
- Cape Flyers
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Skylark Field (ILE), Killeen, TXTo Cape Girardeau Regional Airport (CGI), Cape Girardeau, MO
- Aircraft age
- About 42 years (built 1975)
- 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
- 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 › Aircraft systems
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot reported that, near the conclusion of a long cross-country flight, the engine suddenly lost partial power. He declared an emergency with air traffic control and was advised that the nearest airport was about 5 miles behind him. He reversed course and began heading toward the airport. Unable to reach the airport, the pilot initiated a landing to an open field. During the landing roll, the airplane collided with a fence and a detached garage. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage, empennage, and both wings.
Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed blue-colored fuel streaking from the right wing fuel cap to the trailing edge of the flap. Both fuel tanks were empty.
The pilot reported that he was aware of that the right wing fuel cap was leaking before the accident flight and that it had been leaking since he purchased the airplane about 6 months before the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot’s improper decision to take off with a known fuel leak, which resulted in a loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA17CA361
- Event ID
- 20170623X05152
- Case number
- GAA17CA361
- 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 2017-06-23.
- API snapshot SHA-256: bd4b97697a90007d690180c0a2ae239045046339d21bbbc1dd3619a591ada62f; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:26:50.336Z.