CEN21LA103 · Cessna 172H
Texas Flight Aviation Cessna 172H · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Llano Municipal Airport (AQO) to David Wayne Hooks Memorial Airport (DWH)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN21LA103
- 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 172H
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- 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
- N3702R
- Operator
- Texas Flight Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Llano Municipal Airport (AQO), Llano, TXTo David Wayne Hooks Memorial Airport (DWH), Spring, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 54 years (built 1966)
- 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 · descent
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported the engine lost power as he descended to enter the traffic pattern for landing. His efforts to restore engine power were unsuccessful and he executed a forced landing to an open field, which resulted in substantial damage to the right wing. A postaccident examination revealed no fuel in either fuel tank; however, fuel was present in the fuel lines. The engine was started at the accident site, and it ran for 45 seconds before it shut down. Temporary repairs were made to the right wing, fuel was added to the fuel tanks, and the airplane was ferried to an airport for further repairs. The engine operated normally during the flight.
Based on the available information, it is likely that the engine lost power due to fuel exhaustion.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN21LA103
- Event ID
- 20201229102474
- Case number
- CEN21LA103
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2020-12-29.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 4f7c3cf50265fc8c5a75163d226617e6cf3a406b8a297d2fdb21d257fb6f1ba2; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:31:57.899Z.