GAA18CA431 · Cessna 172 H
Cessna 172 H · Accident: fuel exhaustion en route
From Morehead-Rowan County Clyde A. Thomas Regional Airport (SYM) to Accomack County Airport (MFV)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA18CA431
- 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 H
- 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
- N1401F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Morehead-Rowan County Clyde A. Thomas Regional Airport (SYM), Morehead, KYTo Accomack County Airport (MFV), Melfa, VA
- Aircraft age
- About 52 years (built 1966)
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, about 3 hours en route, he realized that the airplane's fuel level was very low. He started to look for nearby airports to land, but the engine rpm dropped, and he realized the airplane was going to run out of fuel before making it to an alternate airport. He decided to land in a nearby field, but on final, the engine experienced a total power loss. Subsequently, during the off-airport landing, the airplane's nosewheel touched down first and broke off. The airplane then "teetered," and both wings struck the ground before the airplane came to rest.
The airplane sustained substantial damage to both wings.
The pilot reported that he departed with about 40 gallons of fuel. He added that he must have burned off more fuel during taxi and takeoff than he realized and, that if he had stopped for fuel earlier in the flight, the accident would not have happened.
The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s improper preflight fuel planning, which resulted in fuel exhaustion and a subsequent total loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA18CA431
- Event ID
- 20180705X84011
- Case number
- GAA18CA431
- 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: 7b936f62271a301df826b7f0c1f0d44093f50cdfc654c75ed489fcd20843aa20; retrieved 2026-09-16T07:45:07.826Z.