ANC25LA063 · Cessna 182G
Big Island Gravity Cessna 182G · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) en route
From Upolu Airport (upp) to Ellison Onizuka Kona International Airport at Keāhole (Koa)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC25LA063
- 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
- 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
- Not recorded
Cessna 182G
- 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
- N3261S
- Operator
- Big Island Gravity
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Upolu Airport (upp)To Ellison Onizuka Kona International Airport at Keāhole (Koa)
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On July 3, 2025, about 0657 Hawaii-Aleutian standard time, a Cessna 182G airplane, N3261S, was substantially damaged when it was involved in an accident near Kona, Hawaii. The pilot sustained minor injuries. The airplane was operated as a Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91 positioning flight. The pilot reported that the flight was a repositioning flight from the Upolu Airport (UPP), Hawi, Hawaii to the Kona International Airport (KOA). The pilot said that the airplane had 21 gallons of fuel on board. He sumped the fuel tanks before departure and the fuel was clean, and the predeparture engine run up checks were all normal. The pilot said that while en route to KOA at 2,400 ft msl, he maintained a cruise power setting of 2,300 rpm and 22 inches of manifold pressure. However, during the approach for landing at KOA, about a half mile away, and before the pilot began to adjust the airplane to a landing configuration, he noticed the Engine Gas Temperatures (EGTs) were higher than expected at a full rich mixture setting and concluded that the engine was running lean. The pilot confirmed no loss of manifold pressure and ruled out carburetor icing. Subsequently the engine began to lose power. The pilot applied carburetor heat, and the engine began to run better for about 15 to 20 seconds before the engine lost all power. The pilot selected an area of rough, uneven, lava-covered terrain as a forced landing site, which resulted in substantial damage to the fuselage and wings. A detailed engine examination is pending the recovery of the wreckage.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC25LA063
- Event ID
- 20250705200461
- Case number
- ANC25LA063
- 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. 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: 0fc7f3f354cb47c55314c77c70eaf9ba996a0af0cf04b096da56c1f6647af2e9; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:02:33.081Z.