WPR22LA337 · Cessna 180
Cessna 180 · Accident: fuel starvation on approach
From Vance Brand Airport (LMO) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR22LA337
- 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 180
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 180
- 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
- N3135D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Vance Brand Airport (LMO), Longmont, COTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 67 years (built 1955)
- 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 pattern crosswind
- 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 › Aircraft systems
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- 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 accident pilot reported that he had topped the airplane off with fuel before departure. Following an uneventful flight, the pilot began a descent to the airport traffic pattern and enrichened the mixture and applied carburetor heat. While on the downwind for the runway, he noted that he had about 10.5 to 11 gallons of fuel remaining. The pilot conducted a low approach by descending over the runway using an intermediate power setting to inspect the runway for wildlife. As the pilot initiated a climb and turned onto the left crosswind leg, the engine lost all power about 300 ft above ground level, and he initiated a forced landing to a nearby clearing. Subsequently, the airplane impacted trees and came to rest in a nose-low attitude.
Examination of the recovered airframe and engine revealed no evidence of any preexisting mechanical malfunction that would have precluded normal operation.
The reported fuel level would have placed the fuel levels in both fuel tanks below 1/4 tank, which would prohibit takeoff according to the airplane owner’s manual. It’s likely that following the low pass over the runway, with the application of power and a climbing turn, the fuel was unported and interrupted the fuel delivery to the engine, which resulted in a loss of engine power.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power due to fuel starvation as a result of unporting of the fuel.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR22LA337
- Event ID
- 20220908105889
- Case number
- WPR22LA337
- 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: dd7694bba8407ee640c077a77962ddea9f90d63a79efcc90d08fffb32f5fe1f1; retrieved 2026-09-16T15:57:10.350Z.