ERA24LA232 · Cessna 172P
Cessna 172P · Accident: fuel starvation en route
From Copiah County Airport (M11) to Peter Prince Field (2R4)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA24LA232
- 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 172P
- 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
- N658NV
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Copiah County Airport (M11), Crystal Springs, MSTo Peter Prince Field (2R4), Milton, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 43 years (built 1981)
- 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 · cruise
- 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 systems
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The owner reported that the airplane had been idle for 25 years before he purchased it and had an annual inspection performed. The accident pilot, who was a friend of the owner, then performed a 45-minute local flight before departing on the accident flight to take the airplane from Mississippi to Florida. The pilot stated that, during cruise flight, the engine began to surge and run erratically before it lost all power. The pilot selected a field for a forced landing, but “lacked the energy for a proper flare,” and the airplane landed hard, resulting in substantial damage. Examination of the cockpit and cabin area revealed that the copilot and rear seats were not installed. There was no carpeting nor interior trim panels installed, and unsecured insulation was exposed. One blanket of insulation hung free from the ceiling. Instruments and radios were labeled “Inop” across the instrument panel. A postaccident test run of the engine revealed no anomalies. The fuel tank vent tube located near the leading edge of the left wing was found obstructed by a compacted organic material consistent with mud dauber nesting. According to the manufacturer, a blocked fuel vent can result in fuel starvation, a loss of engine power, and complete engine stoppage.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation as a result of a fuel vent line that was clogged by an insect nest.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA24LA232
- Event ID
- 20240529194345
- Case number
- ERA24LA232
- 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, coordinates, 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: 4ccfc3c6eaa6918df44ba1bc165e5b432dfd8fb791cbf6c4fb5e347c2d2dcbbc; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:49:01.335Z.