WPR18LA092 · Cessna 172 N
Star Marianas Air Cessna 172 N · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Mount Gunson Airport (GSN) to Mount Gunson Airport (GSN)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR18LA092
- 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
- N7328F
- Operator
- Star Marianas Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mount Gunson Airport (GSN), ObyanTo Mount Gunson Airport (GSN), Obyan
- Aircraft age
- About 39 years (built 1979)
- 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 · climb to cruise
- 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)
- 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
- 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 operator, about 5 minutes after departure for a local, aerial observation flight, the engine began running roughly and then lost all power. While returning to the airport, the pilot was able to regain engine power momentarily by pumping the throttle control, but shortly after, the engine began to run roughly again, and the power decreased to 1,000 rpm. Subsequently, the pilot declared an emergency, and a tower controller cleared him to land. Due to the opposite direction departing airport traffic, the pilot chose to conduct a straight-in approach instead of a 360° turn to lose altitude. After landing, the airplane bounced several times, and the pilot then deliberately veered it off the runway. Subsequently, the airplane impacted a ditch and nosed over. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the wings, vertical stabilizer, and rudder. The pilot reported that he did not visually check the fuel tanks before departure and that he did not recall whether he looked at the fuel quantity indicators before or during the flight. The pilot did not report if he conducted any preflight fuel planning. The operator reported that the fuel logs did not indicate that the airplane had been fueled on the day of the accident. During examination of the airplane, no fuel was found in the wing tanks or carburetor bowl. A small amount of fuel was found in the gascolator bowl. No stains or other evidence was found at the accident site indicating that fuel had leaked from the airplane. Examination of the engine and airframe revealed no evidence of any preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. Although previous flight times and fuel records were not obtained during the investigation, given that the pilot did not check the fuel quantity before the flight, it is likely that his preflight fuel planning was inadequate because he did not ensure sufficient fuel was onboard for the flight and that he did not adequately monitor the fuel in flight, which led to fuel exhaustion and a subsequent total loss of engine power.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight fuel planning and inadequate in-flight fuel monitoring which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion and an emergency landing and subsequent impact with a ditch.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR18LA092
- Event ID
- 20180220X20935
- Case number
- WPR18LA092
- 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: 19e95b53cf30f3b67fecea3597e9ead1c64a1809b8e35b6cf121031928e269cc; retrieved 2026-09-16T06:29:39.355Z.