ERA25LA302 · Cessna 172 L
N7205Q Cessna 172 L · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) during takeoff
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA25LA302
- 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
- Not recorded
Cessna 172 L
- 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
- N7205Q
- Operator
- N7205Q
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 53 years (built 1972)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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 August 15, 2025, about 1415 eastern daylight time, a Cessna 172, N7205Q, was substantially damaged when it was involved in an accident near Titusville, Florida. The pilot was seriously injured and the flight instructor received minor injuries. The airplane was operated as a Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91 instructional flight. According to the pilot, a preflight inspection was performed on the airplane and fuel onboard was 17.5 gallons. After about 40 minutes of flying, they returned to the departure airport to practice touch and go landings. While in the traffic pattern on the third touch and go, the airplane was in a descent, and when the pilot attempted to add power, the engine did not respond. The flight instructor stated that he noticed the tachometer was reading 1,000 rpm, but the throttle lever was fully in. He stated that the fuel selector was on both, the mixture was in the rich position, and the carburetor heat was “on”, but the engine did not respond. The flight instructor took control of the airplane and attempted to fly back towards the runway, but the airplane contacted trees about ½ mile from the airport property. A postaccident examination of the airplane by a Federal Aviation Administration inspector revealed several gallons of automotive fuel remained in the tanks of the airplane. The wreckage was retained for further examination.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA25LA302
- Event ID
- 20250818200801
- Case number
- ERA25LA302
- 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: 0b550f04e8fe78f2b722283c4da1c05ccc9a72e3bb9be1329a03d1c2c82f26e6; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:13:25.141Z.