ERA22LA298 · Cessna 172 M
Cessna 172 M · Accident: fuel exhaustion en route
From Chambers Airport (45PN) to Weltzien Skypark Airport (15G)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA22LA298
- 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
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- 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 172 M
- 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
- N12115
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chambers Airport (45PN), Tunkhannock, PATo Weltzien Skypark Airport (15G), Wadsworth, OH
- Aircraft age
- About 49 years (built 1973)
- 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
- 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 › Action/decision
- 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 fueled the airplane before takeoff on the last leg of the cross-country flight. As he began the descent toward his home airport, the pilot noted that the fuel gauges were indicating lower than he had ever observed them to be. Shortly after he turned to a nearby airport to purchase additional fuel, the engine stopped producing power. During the forced landing, the airplane’s landing gear impacted trees, and the airplane descended nose-first to the ground, substantially damaging the fuselage and right wing.
Examination of the wreckage revealed no evidence of fuel in the fuel tanks, fuel lines, or carburetor. No preimpact anomalies or malfunctions that would have precluded normal operation were observed. Fuel calculations for the takeoff and cruise portions of the accident flight revealed that between about 2 and 6 gallons of fuel could have remained at the time of the accident; however, these calculations did not account for improper fuel mixture leaning or fuel used during start, taxi, and run-up. Given that the pilot did not lean the mixture during the cross-country flight, it is likely the airplane’s fuel supply had been completely exhausted, resulting in the total loss of engine power. Had appropriate preflight fuel planning and inflight fuel monitoring been performed by the pilot, the fuel exhaustion likely would have been prevented.
Probable cause
The pilots’ improper preflight fuel planning and in-flight fuel management, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA22LA298
- Event ID
- 20220705105424
- Case number
- ERA22LA298
- 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: ea149b525f145852c849c9fc9cd32b4133df908761cb48cc713f625f8082a6ba; retrieved 2026-09-16T15:25:21.786Z.