WPR22LA017 · Cessna 177
Cessna 177 · Accident: fuel starvation en route
From Talus Ranch Airport (WA97) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR22LA017
- 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 177
- 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
- N3388T
- Operator
- Eric J King · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Talus Ranch Airport (WA97), Zillah, WATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 53 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
- 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 starvation
- 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 of the airplane reported that, after the takeoff he switched to the right fuel tank to verify that it was working, and then switched back to the left tank to run it dry for upcoming maintenance. When the engine began to sputter, he switched to the right tank, but the engine lost all power, despite turning the fuel pump on, pumping the throttle, and again switching back to the left tank. He force-landed the airplane to a dirt field where the nose landing gear collapsed, which resulted in substantial damage to the fuselage. The pilot examined the fuel tanks and discovered that the left tank had about 2 gallons remaining, and the right tank had about 15 gallons remaining. The pilot stated that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation as a result of the pilot's improper fuel management.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR22LA017
- Event ID
- 20211020104135
- Case number
- WPR22LA017
- 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: 9409cfa11de93bfada640f1656b2e95d224ce5d3b13833006e857aae22b9ea0f; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:41:10.542Z.