WPR23LA060 · Cessna 177
Cessna 177 · Accident en route
From Lake Havasu City Airport (KHII) to Sedona Airport (KSEZ)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR23LA060
- 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
- N2994X
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lake Havasu City Airport (KHII), Lake Havasu, AZTo Sedona Airport (KSEZ), Sedona, AZ
- Aircraft age
- About 55 years (built 1967)
- 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 · cruise
- 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
- Unknown or undetermined
- 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 power plant
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was on a cross-country flight and had climbed to his en route cruising altitude. The airplane continued at that altitude for about 10 minutes and then the engine sustained a total loss of power. The pilot attempted to troubleshoot the loss of power while preparing for an off-airport landing. He estimated the airplane had about 23 gallons of fuel at this time. The pilot intentionally pulled back on the controls to deplete airspeed and avoid contacting a boulder during the forced landing. The airplane stalled, impacted the terrain, and came to rest inverted in a field.
Postaccident examination revealed no evidence of leakage in the fuel system, but only trace amounts of fuel were found throughout the system and the 23 gallons could not be accounted for. It is unknown if the fuel egressed from the system after impact. The throttle cable was attached to the carburetor arm but was damaged and could only move slightly when manipulating the control knob in the cockpit (full travel was not possible). However, the pilot reported manipulating the throttle following the power loss; therefore, the throttle cable damage most likely occurred as a result of the impact.
The air intake tubing was partially crushed and evidence was found of it having been modified. It is unknown if a lack of air to the carburetor contributed to the accident.
Probable cause
The airplane’s loss of engine power for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR23LA060
- Event ID
- 20221207106431
- Case number
- WPR23LA060
- 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: 8813d9f8a4cbd4aa84cc7c972a02832496da4dddf36b1b1470658bf5c195643a; retrieved 2026-09-16T16:32:30.111Z.