CEN22LA181 · Cessna 172M
K S Flying Club Cessna 172M · Accident: fuel related on approach
From Wamego Municipal Airport (69K) to Manhattan Regional Airport (MHK)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN22LA181
- 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 172M
- 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
- N9263H
- Operator
- K S Flying Club
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wamego Municipal Airport (69K), Wamego, KSTo Manhattan Regional Airport (MHK), Manhattan, KS
- Aircraft age
- About 47 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
- Approach · VFR go-around
- 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 related
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
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 flew a low approach to a turf runway with an upslope and then attempted a go around with an airspeed of about 55 knots and the flaps extended. The pilot noted a partial loss of engine power and noted that the airplane would not climb. The airplane descended slightly and subsequently impacted trees and fence poles beyond the departure end of the runway, which damaged both wings. Postaccident examination of the airplane and engines revealed no anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. The pilot stated he did not apply carburetor heat during the approach. With the probability of serious carburetor icing at glide power, the lack of carburetor heat likely contributed to the partial loss of engine power during the go-around attempt. Another pilot familiar with the airport reported that the runway’s upslope was difficult to fly over. Because the pilot did not maintain a higher airspeed during the low approach and initiate the go-around earlier, he flew an unsuitable profile for the upsloping runway.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to use carburetor heat during the approach and his unsuitable flight profile for an upsloping runway, which resulted in a partial loss of engine power and an impact with terrain during an attempted go-around.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN22LA181
- Event ID
- 20220422104987
- Case number
- CEN22LA181
- 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 2022-04-21.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 5104a63ccb6acb0e534fb2aeafd526e809385c6b50a4c81334f920f176a2e159; retrieved 2026-09-16T15:09:53.208Z.