GAA17CA505 · Cessna 177RG
Squadron 2 Acquisition Cessna 177RG · Accident: fuel exhaustion en route
From Burns Municipal Airport (KBNO) to Reid-Hillview Airport of Santa Clara County (KRHV)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA17CA505
- 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 177RG
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 177
- 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
- N8053G
- Operator
- Squadron 2 Acquisition
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Burns Municipal Airport (KBNO), Burns, ORTo Reid-Hillview Airport of Santa Clara County (KRHV), San Jose, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 46 years (built 1971)
- 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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, he was flying a 400-nautical-mile, cross-county flight. He reported that the outside air temperature along the route had been hot. He recalled that the engine temperature had been high and that he "increased the mixture to cool the engine down multiple times." As he approached his destination, the engine began "coughing for 3-4 minutes" before the engine stopped. He attempted to land at the destination airport but was unable to reach it, so he made a forced landing in a mud-filled drainage channel about .5 mile north of the airport.
The airplane sustained substantial damage to the lower fuselage and windscreen.
A Federal Aviation Administration aviation safety inspector examined the airplane's fuel system at the accident site. He reported that both fuel tanks were found empty, with about 1/2 cup of fuel at the bottom of the left tank, after removing the sump drain.
Per the National Transportation Safety Board's Pilot Aircraft Accident Report, the pilot reported that the accident could have been prevented with the "Use of [a] fuel dipstick for better measurement of fuel quantity."
The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s improper preflight fuel planning, 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 GAA17CA505
- Event ID
- 20170822X12229
- Case number
- GAA17CA505
- 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, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2017-08-22.
- API snapshot SHA-256: cb8ecc4d106139d38e62321adb9ff3d65d13a3d231d846a6cf9b75e2a9e24275; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:44:20.189Z.