ERA25LA200 · Cessna 172 E
Cessna 172 E · Accident: fuel starvation en route
From North Perry Airport (HWO) to Naples Municipal Airport (apf)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA25LA200
- 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 172 E
- 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
- N5405T
- Operator
- EnvySky
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From North Perry Airport (HWO), Pembroke Pines, FLTo Naples Municipal Airport (apf)
- Aircraft age
- About 61 years (built 1964)
- 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 › 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
The purpose of the flight was for the pilots to build flight experience, with the commercial pilot practicing simulated instrument meteorological conditions in the left seat, while the private pilot acted as a safety pilot in the right seat. About 2 hours into the night cross-country flight, the airplane sustained a loss of total engine power without any warning or roughness. The commercial pilot tried to restart the engine but was unsuccessful, so the private pilot performed a forced landing to a swamp. During the landing, the airplane nosed over and came to rest inverted.
Examination of the wreckage 3 days later revealed that the right wing fuel tank contained adequate fuel but the left wing fuel tank contained only residual fuel. The engine was subsequently test run successfully at a recovery facility.
The airplane was 61 years old, and its fuel selector handle placard was not as intuitive as other similar models. Specifically, the handle had to be at the 12 o’clock position to select both fuel tanks. The commercial pilot set it at about the 11 o’clock position, which would use only the left fuel tank. It is likely that the commercial pilot exhausted the fuel in the left fuel tank, which resulted in fuel starvation. The commercial pilot also reported that more awareness of the specific aircraft model differences could have prevented the accident.
Probable cause
The commercial pilot’s improper fuel management, which resulted in a loss of total engine power due to fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA25LA200
- Event ID
- 20250509200137
- Case number
- ERA25LA200
- 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: 6c9e8ff505aa01e4f99d787244a4dce94b67585acf1763ad2b2fe01b98841809; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:52:43.238Z.