WPR24LA154 · Cessna 172G
Cessna 172G · Accident: fuel starvation during initial climb
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR24LA154
- 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
- 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 172G
- 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
- N4448L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 58 years (built 1966)
- 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 starvation
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was performing pattern work at the airport. After three takeoffs and landings, he taxied back to the hangar and then decided to complete another orbit in the pattern. The pilot taxied back to the run-up area and performed a run-up, which included checking the magnetos and activating the carburetor heat, both of which produced the required revolutions per minute (rpm) drop. He taxied onto the runway, added power, and as the airplane took off and began to climb, the engine lost all power. Due to the low altitude, the pilot decided to make a forced landing to an open field. During the landing sequence, the empennage was substantially damaged when it impacted a barbed wire fence and separated from the fuselage. Weather conditions at the time of the accident were conducive to the formation of serious carburetor icing at cruise power. Carburetor ice likely formed during the extended taxi back to the pilot’s hangar and then to the run-up area before takeoff. A postaccident examination of the airplane and engine, including an engine test run at idle speed, revealed no mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s inadequate use of carburetor heat, which resulted in a total loss of engine power shortly after takeoff due to fuel starvation as a result of carburetor ice.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR24LA154
- Event ID
- 20240516194273
- Case number
- WPR24LA154
- 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: 399ce6e907429922a37b3514967db1071dcc3943c3d5485fbf9c63c678aaf2d9; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:46:26.975Z.