ERA18TA059 · Cessna 172 N
Cessna 172 N · Accident: loss of engine power (total) on approach
From Union Mills, NC to Union Mills, NC
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA18TA059
- 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 N
- 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
- N91SP
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Union Mills, NCTo Union Mills, NC
- Aircraft age
- About 39 years (built 1978)
- 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
- 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)
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- 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
The commercial pilot was practicing landing approaches to a private airstrip that he was constructing. According to the pilot, while flying about treetop height with full flaps deployed, he added full power to initiate a climb; the engine "sputtered" and stopped producing power. He then performed a forced landing to the unimproved airstrip. During the landing, the airplane "bounced," departed the side of the cleared area, entered the woods, and sustained substantial damage. When asked about the performance and handling of the airplane, the pilot said it was "perfect." He stated that the reason for the loss of engine power was carburetor ice and that he had not used carburetor heat for the low approach and pass over the airstrip. The weather conditions in the area at the time of the accident were conducive to serious icing at cruise power. Therefore, it is likely that the pilot's failure to use carburetor heat resulted in an accumulation of ice within the carburetor that led to a total loss of engine power.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to use carburetor heat in weather conditions conducive to serious carburetor icing, which resulted in a total loss of engine power and a subsequent forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA18TA059
- Event ID
- 20171226X03600
- Case number
- ERA18TA059
- 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: fd5f4572470bff07833310dd59fc523fa3decebf67584dd21d318ee12376c11e; retrieved 2026-09-16T06:14:18.152Z.