ERA23LA190 · Cessna 172H
Cessna 172H · Accident en route
From Winchester Regional Airport (OKV) to Eastern WV Regional Airport/Shepherd Field (MRB)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA23LA190
- 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 172H
- 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
- N2554L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Winchester Regional Airport (OKV), Winchester, VATo Eastern WV Regional Airport/Shepherd Field (MRB), Martinsburg, WV
- Aircraft age
- About 56 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
- 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
While en route to the destination airport, the engine began “sputtering.” The pilot reported that the mixture was in the full rich position and he applied carburetor heat; however, the engine did not regain full power. He performed a forced landing to a field and during the landing the nose landing gear collapsed, which resulted in substantial damage to the fuselage. During the recovery of the airplane, 5 gallons of fuel was noted in the right fuel tank and 10 gallons of fuel was noted in the left fuel tank. A postaccident examination of the wreckage revealed no evidence of any preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation; the reason for the loss of engine power could not be determined.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA23LA190
- Event ID
- 20230412107045
- Case number
- ERA23LA190
- 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: 0e8c7211aa2214a4ce06f40ee8ec986687f4666f6bc34b9923918e42bf91c748; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:30:13.052Z.