CEN18FA088 · Cessna 172F
Cessna 172F · Accident: fuel exhaustion while maneuvering
From Rickenbacker International Airport (KLCK) to Vermilion Regional Airport (KDNV)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN18FA088
- 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
- 1 · 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 172F
- 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
- N8559U
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rickenbacker International Airport (KLCK), Columbus, OHTo Vermilion Regional Airport (KDNV), Danville, IL
- Aircraft age
- About 53 years (built 1965)
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot was ferrying the newly-purchased airplane cross-country for the new owner. The first leg of the trip was completed without incident. After refueling the airplane, the pilot departed and proceeded toward the destination in night visual meteorological conditions. After about 3 hours, 51 minutes of flight, the airplane descended and impacted trees and terrain about 9 miles short of the destination. Examination of the wreckage revealed evidence of fuel exhaustion; both main fuel tanks were intact, no fuel was observed inside the tanks, and no fuel smell was noticed at the site. The lack of damage to the propeller blades was consistent with the engine not developing power at impact. According to the manufacturer's performance chart, with full main tanks, the airplane had an endurance of about 3.7 hours. Therefore, it is likely that the engine lost power as a result of fuel exhaustion.
Although toxicology testing was positive for opioids, the relative amounts of these opioids detected in urine suggest that the source may have been the ingestion of poppy seeds rather than pharmaceuticals.
Probable cause
The pilot's mismanagement of fuel, which resulted in fuel exhaustion and descent and collision with trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN18FA088
- Event ID
- 20180131X13139
- Case number
- CEN18FA088
- 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. 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: d14c187bd31c1a155fb1ab8fd229059c0be277665780ec65b3193cf939f5023a; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:31:45.653Z.