WPR19LA017 · Cessna 180 D
Cessna 180 D · Accident: fuel related on approach
From Palo Alto Airport (PAO) to Lake California Air Park (68CA)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR19LA017
- 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 180 D
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 180
- 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
- N6414X
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Palo Alto Airport (PAO), Palo Alto, CATo Lake California Air Park (68CA), Cottonwood, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 58 years (built 1960)
- 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
- Fuel related
- 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 › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was approaching the destination airport at an altitude of about 1,500 ft about 1.5 miles from the runway threshold, when he attempted to add power by advancing the throttle, but "nothing happened." He "cycled" the mixture and the magnetos, but there was no change, and the airplane descended below the desired glidepath. The pilot did not use carburetor heat during the approach, and he did not apply it following the engine’s failure to respond to the advanced throttle setting. The pilot chose to conduct an off-airport landing in a field, during which the airplane stalled while the pilot attempted to maneuver over power lines.
There was no evidence of any fuel or oil leaks, thermal or fire damage, or any nonimpact-related deficiencies or damage. During a test run, the engine started and functioned normally, except that the maximum rpm achieved was slightly below the design specification. The examination and testing did not reveal any mechanical reasons for the power loss reported by the pilot.
The ambient temperature and dew point in the area of the accident site about the time of the accident were conducive to the development of carburetor icing. Given the lack of mechanical anomalies and the pilot's failure to apply carburetor heat during the descent and following the engine’s lack of response to the power increase, it is likely that the engine developed carburetor ice during the approach at the reduced throttle setting, which resulted in the engine's failure to respond to the pilot's throttle change. The pilot's failure to apply carburetor heat during the reduced power descent was contrary to the airplane manufacturer's Owner's Manual guidance.
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power due to carburetor icing as a result of the pilot's failure to apply carburetor heat during a reduced-power approach descent.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR19LA017
- Event ID
- 20181030X42259
- Case number
- WPR19LA017
- 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: ba5b26c525fbd17db8872fcf2b3047ebbf1eb1344af13ebd895b72054e2bdc0b; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:24:07.788Z.