ERA24LA179 · Cessna R172 E
Cessna R172 E · Accident: fuel contamination en route
From Delaware Airpark (33N) to Rocky Mount Wilson Regional Airport (RWI)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA24LA179
- 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
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- 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 R172 E
- 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
- N3FR
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Delaware Airpark (33N), Dover/Cheswold, DETo Rocky Mount Wilson Regional Airport (RWI), Rocky Mount, NC
- Aircraft age
- About 57 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 · descent
- 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 contamination
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane had not been used for 2 years following an engine overhaul. A mechanic completed an annual inspection of the airplane, and when he and the pilot performed a preflight inspection before beginning the multi-leg trip, they found that the fuel contained, “a lot of water.” They fully fueled the airplane, allowed it to settle overnight, and then “shook” the airplane’s wings before sampling fuel. They also ran the airplane’s engine for two hours on the ground before departing on the first leg of the trip. At the next fuel stop, they drained about “a tablespoon” of water from the fuel system, and during the second fuel stop, they only observed about “2 drops” of water. The accident flight was the third leg of the trip. After nearly 3 hours of flight, and while descending to the destination airport with the carburetor heat applied, the engine lost total power. The pilot established best glide speed and attempted to restore engine power; however, he was unsuccessful and performed a forced landing onto a city street, substantially damaging the fuselage, empennage, and both wings. Postaccident examination of the engine revealed that one of the cylinders exhibited excessive piston-to-cylinder clearance, circumferential markings of the cylinder walls that were not consistent with the typical cross-hatching pattern that would be expected in an engine shortly after overhaul, and its intake valve was stuck open. While anomalous, each of these findings could reasonably be associated with some partial loss of engine power, but not the complete loss of engine power that was described by the pilot during the descent phase of the accident flight. The examination of the airframe also revealed rust around the fuel filler ports, indicative of water entry into the airplane’s fuel tanks. While fuel recovered from the left wing fuel tank was free from contaminants, significant water and debris were observed in fuel recovered from the gascolator and carburetor bowls. Given this information, it is likely that the total loss of engine power was due to contamination of the fuel supply with water and particulate matter.
Probable cause
The pilot and mechanic’s failure to identify and completely eliminate the water and debris contamination present in the airplane’s fuel system before embarking on the flight, which resulted in a total loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA24LA179
- Event ID
- 20240416194096
- Case number
- ERA24LA179
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2024-04-15.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 1b77beda2e15585086a45755338d8fb410ae812671b1b0ba02ca5c6849ce3562; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:40:36.696Z.