ANC25LA017 · Cessna 182F
Cessna 182F · Accident: fuel starvation on approach
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC25LA017
- 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 182F
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- N3206U
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 62 years (built 1963)
- 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
- 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 › 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
At the conclusion of a flight to break in newly installed cylinders, the pilot returned to the departure airport and entered the traffic pattern. The pilot reported moving the fuel selector valve from Right to Both as he approached the airport. As he entered the downwind leg, he said the airplane began to run rough, and the exhaust gas temperature (EGT) rose, so he applied full carburetor heat. Shortly after turning onto final approach, the engine lost total power and the pilot made a forced landing to a vacant parking lot. After landing, the airplane contacted a curb and the nose gear separated from the airplane, resulting in substantial damage to the fuselage and engine mount. The pilot reported that he visually inspected the fuel quantity before takeoff but did not verify the amount of fuel in the wing tanks with the airplane’s dip stick fuel gauge. He stated that the last time the airplane was fueled was six weeks before the accident flight. The total amount of fuel onboard before takeoff could not be confirmed. A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that the fuel tanks and lines were intact and there was no evidence of fuel leakage. The right wing tank was empty and the left wing tank contained about 6 gallons of fuel. Examination of the engine and fuel system did not reveal evidence of any preimpact failures or malfunctions that would have precluded normal operation. The recorded engine data indicated that, during the last minute of the flight, the EGT increased slightly and then began to drop, along with the cylinder head temperature (CHT), consistent with fuel starvation and a subsequent total loss of engine power. The pilot stated he did not lean the fuel mixture during the flight, which likely led to a higher-than-calculated fuel burn rate compared to the performance charts for that make and model of airplane. Due to the low fuel state, when the pilot conducted the right turn the fuel tank likely became unported, resulting in a total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s inadequate fuel planning, which resulted in fuel starvation and a total loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC25LA017
- Event ID
- 20250203199633
- Case number
- ANC25LA017
- 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: cffede70fceb2d58d05332495b421fdd24d7384f931053f5c5098cdfac9f2934; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:38:07.792Z.