WPR25LA307 · Cessna 172
Cessna 172 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) during takeoff
From an unrecorded airport to Friday Harbor Airport (FHR)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR25LA307
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Cessna 172
- 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
- N6831A
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Friday Harbor Airport (FHR), Friday Harbor, WA
- Aircraft age
- About 69 years (built 1956)
- 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 (total)
- 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 September 22, 2025, about 1157 Pacific daylight time, a Cessna 172, N6831A, was substantially damaged when it was involved in an accident near Anacortes, Washington. The pilot was not injured. The airplane was operated as a Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91 personal flight. According to the pilot, he intended to fly the airplane from Anacortes Airport (74S), Anacortes, Washington, to Friday Harbor Airport (FHR), Friday Harbor, Washington. The engine run up was normal, and the pilot departed runway 36. As the airplane was about 400 ft mean sea level (msl), as it crossed the shoreline, the engine began to sputter and subsequently lost all power. The pilot lowered the airplane’s nose to maintain its best glide airspeed and saw that a parking lot west of his position was full of vehicles, and he began a right turn. He stated that he was unable to complete a 180° turn to return to the runway and flew over the water as he attempted to restart the engine. The pilot verified that the fuel selector was positioned on both, the mixture was rich, cycled the throttle and carburetor heat control knobs, and tried both left and right magentos; all with no response from the engine. Subsequently, the pilot initiated a water ditching near the mouth of the Guemes Channel, about 1.5 miles northeast of 74S. Postaccident examination revealed substantial damage to both wings. The wreckage was recovered to a secure location for further examination.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR25LA307
- Event ID
- 20251009201827
- Case number
- WPR25LA307
- 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: bb69bc14ee6793873b7282f1ff37d746c2c1d155917d4d6beb3e017b77d3ab2d; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:27:13.244Z.