CEN24LA003 · Cessna 172 R
Cessna 172 R · Accident on approach
From Grand Prairie Municipal Airport (KGPM) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN24LA003
- 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 172 R
- 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
- N397ES
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Grand Prairie Municipal Airport (KGPM), Grand Prairie, TXTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 26 years (built 1997)
- 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 final
- 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 departed on a local flight around the area with a friend. After returning to the airport, he entered the traffic pattern and realized that he had inadvertently extended his downwind leg while explaining the before-landing checklist procedures to the passenger. As the pilot turned the airplane onto the final leg of the traffic pattern, he noticed that the airplane was lower than usual due to the extended downwind and added engine power. The engine did not respond, and he applied full throttle, but the engine still did not respond. After determining that he could not glide the airplane to the airport, the pilot performed a forced landing to a parking lot. After landing, the airplane collided with a fence, resulting in substantial damage to both wings. The pilot secured the engine and egressed the airplane with the passenger. The airplane was recovered to a secure facility for further examination. To prepare the engine for a test run, a repair was performed to one of the engine mounts and a test club replaced the damaged propeller. A fuel can containing 100 low lead fuel was connected to the fuel system to simulate airframe-provided fuel. The firewall fuel strainer was damaged and would leak fuel freely, so the fuel container could not be routed through the header tank. A fuel line was connected directly from the fuel can to the electric fuel pump. The engine was primed and started. The engine parameters were normal, and the engine was able to provide rated horsepower. No anomalies were detected with the engine that would have precluded normal operation. The engine logbook recorded that a mechanic replaced the engine fuel servo before the accident flight. However, the results of the engine run could not be used to determine if the fuel servo contributed to the reported loss of engine power.
Probable cause
A reported loss of engine power during the landing approach due to undetermined reasons, which resulted in a forced landing and collision with a fence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN24LA003
- Event ID
- 20231002193177
- Case number
- CEN24LA003
- 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: 6178a61e0314b0a141e9e3f1f1108ca0a646c88e7fe49befb78275f761e3924c; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:11:10.366Z.