CEN25LA377 · Cessna 172F
Cessna 172F · Accident: fuel exhaustion on approach
From Manila Municipal Airport (MXA) to Lancaster Airport (LNC)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN25LA377
- 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
- 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 172F
- 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
- N7774A
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Manila Municipal Airport (MXA), Manila, ARTo Lancaster Airport (LNC), Lancaster, TX
- 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
- 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 exhaustion
- 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 › Experience/knowledge
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot intended to complete a 4-hour night flight while following a company multi-engine airplane. Before departure, the airplane was serviced with about 18 gallons of fuel; the main fuel tanks were full (36 gallons usable), and the auxiliary fuel tank was empty. The pilot thought that the airplane contained 53 gallons of usable fuel, even though the auxiliary tank was empty. During final approach to the destination airport the engine lost total power, and the pilot made a forced landing into the airport perimeter fence. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the right wing. The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or anomalies with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that the fuel tanks remained intact and undamaged. A few ounces of fuel were found in the left main tank, and the right main and auxiliary tanks were empty.
Probable cause
The pilot’s inadequate fuel planning and failure to monitor the fuel consumption which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN25LA377
- Event ID
- 20250915200998
- Case number
- CEN25LA377
- 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, 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: ed70802e28b0b1d92d9637e99a5b6deb21b70e1620629910a1c531224abe5405; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:20:11.576Z.