WPR21LA303 · Cessna 172S
Cessna 172S · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Southwest Washington Regional Airport (KLS) to Tacoma Narrows Airport (TIW)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR21LA303
- 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 172S
- 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
- N513WF
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Southwest Washington Regional Airport (KLS), Kelso, WATo Tacoma Narrows Airport (TIW), Tacoma, WA
- Aircraft age
- About 17 years (built 2004)
- 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 (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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While en route about 3,500 ft mean sea level, the airplane’s engine lost power. The pilot attempted to restart the engine unsuccessfully and made a forced landing in a pasture. During the landing, the airplane nosed over, which resulted in substantial damage. The pilot reported that he did not know why the engine lost power. He stated that the fuel selector valve was in the “BOTH” position; the mixture control was set to rich; the throttle lever was in; and there was no adverse weather. He further stated the fuel-injected engine had no issues during the earlier portion of the flight and that the airplane had an adequate supply of fuel.
Postaccident examination of the airframe and engine revealed no evidence of mechanical damage to the engine. The engine was successfully run at various power settings for about 10 minutes. A functional check of the magnetos showed an appropriate decrease of about 50 rpm when operating on either the left or right magneto. When the throttle was advanced to the full forward position, the engine’s rpm was about 2,300. Overall, the examination revealed no evidence of any anomalies that would have precluded normal operation of the airplane. The investigation was unable to determine the reason for the loss of engine power from the available evidence.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined based on the available evidence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR21LA303
- Event ID
- 20210803103621
- Case number
- WPR21LA303
- 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, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2021-06-11.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 93efeab7bf1c6788691bcc181c23008791dcf3f357d99238910710934775f42d; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:22:19.045Z.