CEN24LA168 · Cessna 172M
Cessna 172M · Accident: fuel related on approach
From Stanley Municipal Airport (08D) to Bemidji Regional Airport (BJI)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN24LA168
- 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 172M
- 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
- N12805
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Stanley Municipal Airport (08D), Stanley, NDTo Bemidji Regional Airport (BJI), Bemidji, MN
- Aircraft age
- About 51 years (built 1973)
- 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 · IFR initial approach
- 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 related
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he had just been cleared to fly the GPS approach in night instrument meteorological conditions when the engine rpm decreased. The pilot turned on the carburetor heat, enrichened the fuel mixture, and advanced the throttle forward in order to troubleshoot the loss of engine power; however, there was no change in the engine operations. The pilot did not recall the accident sequence. Security video footage showed that the airplane touched down on the top of a one-story building, then impacted a retaining wall and the ground. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the engine mounts and forward fuselage. A postaccident examination of the engine revealed no mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. The investigators determined that there should have been adequate fuel to complete the flight. The temperature was about 37° F and the dew point was about 35° F. According to the carburetor icing probability graph conditions were conducive for serious icing at cruise power. The loss of engine power was likely due to the accumulation of carburetor icing during the flight. While the pilot did activate the carburetor heat, it is likely that the ice had already accumulated to a point that the carburetor heat was insufficient to melt the ice and restore full engine power.
Probable cause
The pilot’s delayed use of carburetor heat which resulted in the loss of engine power due to carburetor icing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN24LA168
- Event ID
- 20240430194174
- Case number
- CEN24LA168
- 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: 0c9d534a39df74bbaf40a6712ec60e9f7dd38086f8c369a8425886225c165760; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:42:50.893Z.