CEN20LA403 · Cessna 177RG
Zain Aviation Cessna 177RG · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) en route
From Chicago Executive Airport (PWK) to Lake in the Hills Airport (3CK)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN20LA403
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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
- N2699V
- Operator
- Zain Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chicago Executive Airport (PWK), Wheeling, ILTo Lake in the Hills Airport (3CK), Lake in the Hills, IL
- Aircraft age
- About 45 years (built 1975)
- 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
- Loss of engine power (partial)
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Pole
- 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
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Shortly after departure, the airplane’s engine lost partial power and the pilot conducted a forced landing to a road. During the landing, the airplane struck a utility pole. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the right wing and empennage. After the accident, the fuel flow/pressure gauge displayed 5.5 gallons remaining. A short engine run was conducted, and no anomalies were detected. Following the engine run, 1 gallon of fuel was drained, which according to certification documentation, is the unusable fuel. An examination of the airplane’s fuel system revealed no deficiencies. Documentation for the fuel flow/pressure gauge used by the pilot to estimate onboard fuel informs pilots that the fuel remaining is the amount based on initial pilot inputs and that it should never be the primary indicator of fuel quantity and that fuel should be visually checked or measured before takeoff.
The circumstances of the accident are consistent with a partial loss of engine power due to fuel starvation
Probable cause
The loss of partial engine power due to fuel starvation during departure which resulted in a forced landing and collision with a utility pole.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN20LA403
- Event ID
- 20200921X94025
- Case number
- CEN20LA403
- 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: 87df0798c872ac81445416c7135bc1d315268c7f9e9db8917280495cba51ce94; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:05:14.799Z.