CEN21LA010 · Cessna TR182
Cessna TR182 · Accident: fuel exhaustion en route
From Stephenville Clark Regional Airport (SEP) to Bridgeport Municipal Airport (XBP)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN21LA010
- 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 TR182
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- N5196S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Stephenville Clark Regional Airport (SEP), Stephenville, TXTo Bridgeport Municipal Airport (XBP), Bridgeport, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 40 years (built 1980)
- 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 · climb to 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that during cruise flight he encountered engine problems, which were followed by a total loss of engine power. The pilot decided to perform a forced landing, during which the right wing was substantially damaged. A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that neither the left nor the right fuel tank had fuel. The pilot stated that, before departure, the left tank was about one-half full, and the right tank was nearly empty. Thus, the pilot was aware of the low fuel state of the airplane but thought that the airplane would have enough fuel for the flight. Because no usable fuel remained on the airplane, the circumstances of the accident were consistent with fuel exhaustion resulting in the total loss of engine power.
Probable cause
The pilot’s inadequate fuel planning, which led to fuel exhaustion and a subsequent total loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN21LA010
- Event ID
- 20201008102114
- Case number
- CEN21LA010
- 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, 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: f6a0b55f5740983009bdf329f5cbd239c96e0e55d366c9d5a6c7b95a12ade6b9; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:12:36.052Z.