ERA25LA188 · Cessna 172RG
Cessna 172RG · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) during initial climb
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA25LA188
- 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
- Ongoing
- 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 172RG
- 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
- N6386V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 45 years (built 1980)
- 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
- Loss of engine power (partial)
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On April 23, 2025, about 1703 eastern daylight time, a Cessna 172RG, N6386V, was substantially damaged when it was involved in an accident near Louisburg, North Carolina. The commercial pilot and passenger were not injured. The airplane was operated as a Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91 personal flight. The pilot reported that he performed a preflight inspection of the airplane. During the inspection, he found water while sampling fuel from the fuel tanks. The pilot continued to sample fuel from the fuel tanks until no more water was found. He then rocked the wings to release any trapped water and sampled fuel from the fuel tanks again until there was no water found. He reported that the wing fuel tanks were about half full of fuel. The engine start and run-up were normal, with no abnormalities noted by the pilot. About 1702, the pilot entered the runway and applied full power for takeoff. With all engine indications normal, he released the brakes and began the takeoff roll. When the airplane reached an airspeed of 55 knots, the pilot increased the airplane’s pitch attitude and began climbing out at an airspeed 70 knots. When no usable runway remained, the pilot selected the landing gear to the up position, and he reported “the moment the landing pump switched on the engine lost power.” The pilot described the loss of power as a smooth reduction of power to idle, where the engine stayed. He selected the landing gear to the down position, reduced the throttle control, and attempted to land on the remaining runway and runoff area. After realizing he could not, he attempted to glide over an airport perimeter fence. During the glide, he applied full throttle, and the engine revved to about 1,900 rpm before reducing uncommanded again to idle. The landing gear impacted the perimeter fence, the horizontal stabilizer impacted a fence pole, and the airplane impacted a road near the airport perimeter, sliding off the road and into a field. The horizontal stabilizer sustained substantial damage during the accident sequence. The wreckage was retained for further examination.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA25LA188
- Event ID
- 20250428200073
- Case number
- ERA25LA188
- 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. 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: fc08cf357ff111a94be28c49a97b77d6836bc77563dc70ece6e03145d3e1d717; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:51:09.040Z.