WPR23LA127 · Cessna 172L
Cessna 172L · Accident: fuel exhaustion during initial climb
From Lewiston Nez Perce County Airport (KLWS) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR23LA127
- 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 172L
- 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
- N7010Q
- Operator
- Mosman Matthew J
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lewiston Nez Perce County Airport (KLWS), Lewiston, IDTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 52 years (built 1971)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor reported that, he planned to complete back-to-back flight lessons with two students. His students completed the preflight inspection and each tank measured about half full. The flight instructor verified that the fuel gauges indicated sufficient fuel for both lessons. During the second flight lesson with a student pilot at the controls, the airplane experienced a total loss of engine power. The flight instructor took control of the airplane and force-landed on a golf course. The airplane collided with trees during landing, resulting in substantial damage to the right wing. The flight instructor reported that the airplane ran out of fuel, and that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The flight instructor’s inadequate fuel planning and improper in-flight decision-making, 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 WPR23LA127
- Event ID
- 20230313106883
- Case number
- WPR23LA127
- 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: 9678484209e083fa6fffde41379ff5fd9aca7f07f92469e1130713c0ac764f49; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:25:12.109Z.