WPR17LA147 · Cessna 180 UNDESIGNAT
Cessna 180 UNDESIGNAT · Accident: fuel exhaustion en route
From Johnson Creek Airport (3U2) to Baker City Municipal Airport (BKE)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR17LA147
- 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 180 UNDESIGNAT
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 180
- 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
- N4683B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Johnson Creek Airport (3U2), Yellow Pine, IDTo Baker City Municipal Airport (BKE), Baker City, OR
- Aircraft age
- About 62 years (built 1955)
- 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 · descent
- 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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot reported that he departed on a cross-country flight with 26.5 gallons of fuel and that he planned to make an intermediate stop to refuel before proceeding to the destination airport. The intermediate fuel stop airport was 97 nautical miles (nm) from the departure airport. About 45 minutes into the flight, when the airplane was about 3,000 ft above ground level and 5 nm east of the intermediate fuel stop airport, the engine lost power. The pilot assumed that the airplane was out of fuel and subsequently realized that the airplane would not be able to reach the intended airport. As a result, the pilot made a forced landing to a hayfield, during which the airplane sustained substantial damage.
The pilot was using the fuel totalizer to keep track of the amount of fuel during the flight. The pilot reported that the fuel totalizer indicated 14 gallons at the time of the engine failure. The pilot also reported that, at that time, the fuel selector indicated "BOTH" and the fuel gauges indicated that the left tank was 3/8 full and the right tank was empty.
Aircraft recovery personnel reported that, when they drained fuel from each tank, the left tank was almost empty, and the right tank had less than 1.7 gallons remaining. According to the Cessna 180 Owner's Manual, the unusable amount of fuel was 1 gallon. Additionally, no fuel streaking stains were observed on the top of either wing, which would have been consistent with fuel that was vented overboard.
The pilot reported no mechanical anomalies with the airplane or engine that would have precluded normal operation. Thus, the loss of engine power resulted from fuel exhaustion. Because of his experience in the airplane make and model, the pilot should have known the airplane's fuel burn and should have planned to divert sooner rather than rely on the fuel totalizer and the fuel gauges.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion, which resulted from the pilot's inadequate preflight fuel planning.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR17LA147
- Event ID
- 20170709X75327
- Case number
- WPR17LA147
- 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, coordinates. 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: ee0a7b79f72ad6218a3a6c975c9f624add625ec7d7e9484bbfb01d38e61fd75f; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:31:14.008Z.