GAA19CA166 · Cessna 177RG
Cessna 177RG · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Ontonagon County Schuster Field (OGM) to Eagle River Union Airport (EGV)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA19CA166
- 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 177RG
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 177
- 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
- N52047
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ontonagon County Schuster Field (OGM), Ontonagon, MITo Eagle River Union Airport (EGV), Eagle River, WI
- Aircraft age
- About 42 years (built 1977)
- 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 · 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
- 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, on a previous flight, the airplane had been filled with fuel and flown for about 3.8 hours. He added that he attempted to refuel the airplane for the accident flight but that the self-service fuel station at the departure airport "failed to dispense fuel." He stated that he visually checked the tanks and calculated that there would be enough fuel to make the flight. He added that, after departing, during cruise flight about 1,800 ft above ground level, the "engine stopped" and that he then set the "best glide speed" toward a nearby airport. After realizing the airplane would not reach the airport, he executed a 180º turn and landed the airplane on a snow-covered, frozen lake with the landing gear retracted.
The airplane sustained substantial damage to the left wing and fuselage.
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 fuel planning, which resulted in fuel exhaustion and the subsequent total loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA19CA166
- Event ID
- 20190309X35055
- Case number
- GAA19CA166
- 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: bae7c1710f6b4df4fae6fc2d0b4d68c8a37e8078c736d0dec5921a161c06fa46; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:38:45.832Z.