ERA20LA245 · Cessna 177 A
Cessna 177 A · Accident: fuel exhaustion en route
From Addington Field / Elizabethtown Regional Airport (EKX) to Clermont County Airport (I69)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA20LA245
- 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 177 A
- 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
- N30309
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Addington Field / Elizabethtown Regional Airport (EKX), Elizabethtown, KYTo Clermont County Airport (I69), Batavia, OH
- Aircraft age
- About 52 years (built 1968)
- 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
- 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 was flying the airplane as a favor to the previous owner and delivering it to the new owner. As part of his preflight inspection he used a wooden stick with graduated markings that he found in the airplane to determine the fuel level, and estimated each tank had about 12.5 gallons, which was more than enough for the intended flight. About 40 to 45 minutes into the flight, while flying at 3,000 ft mean sea level, the pilot noticed a slight drop of engine rpm which he thought was carburetor ice. He applied carburetor heat which restored the engine rpm, and about 3 to 4 minutes later, he noted the engine rpm had "quite a bit more rpm decrease, and the engine then quit." He maintained best glide airspeed and was unable to restore engine power. He maneuvered for a forced landing in a pasture. During the landing roll the airplane nosed over.
Postaccident examination found both fuel tanks empty and there was no evidence of browning of vegetation beneath the resting position of either wing, nor a smell of fuel by a first responder. About 2 ounces and 4 ounces of blue colored fuel consistent with 100 low lead were drained from the carburetor float bowl and airframe fuel strainer, respectively. There was no evidence of fuel leaks from either wing, fuel cap, or fuel vent system. Following recovery of the airplane a temporary fuel supply was plumbed into the fuel supply line at each wing root and the engine was started and operated normally with no discrepancies noted. Given this information it is likely that the loss of engine power was most likely the result of fuel exhaustion.
While the pilot believed there was 12.5 gallons of fuel in each fuel tank at the start of the flight, a mechanic who performed the last annual inspection that was signed off 2 days before the accident reported that each tank had an estimated 6 gallons when the inspection began, and that the amount of fuel at the start of the accident flight was likely slightly less due to post maintenance engine operations. Therefore, it is likely that the amount of fuel in both fuel tanks at the start of the accident flight was about half of what the pilot believed was onboard based on his assessment using utilizing the wooden sticks he found in the airplane.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to ensure that an adequate supply of fuel was available for the flight, which resulted in total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA20LA245
- Event ID
- 20200713X82236
- Case number
- ERA20LA245
- 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, cause areas. 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: bb698565d9e370969026e249619a138b5fc2a96381cd1b4f3d4a8d95a995211f; retrieved 2026-09-16T12:07:44.610Z.