CHI99LA081 · Cessna 150M
Cessna 150M · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Tamarack Landing (17KS) to Detroit, MI
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI99LA081
- 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 150M
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 150
- 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
- N704BF
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tamarack Landing (17KS), Chanute, KSTo Detroit, MI
- 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 · cruise
- First occurrenceThe 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
- Total loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. 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
- Fluid, fuel › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that after flying for 2.5 hours, he decided to land at an airport near Champaign, Illinois, and missed the airport due to the wind. The pilot stated that he then diverted to Paxton, Illinois, and after six attempts was unable to locate the airport. The pilot stated that the airplane ran out of fuel and he declared an emergency. An off airport landing was made into a plowed farm field 2.5 miles west of the Paxton Airport. The forced landing was made on a heading of 020 degrees. A weather report for a reporting station located 27 nautical miles and 190 degrees from the accident site reported winds from 180 degrees at 20 knots gusting to 26 knots. The left wing fuel tank contained no fuel and the right wing fuel tank contained less than one cupful of fuel. Examination of the airplane revealed no other anomalies.
Probable cause
the inadequate preflight planning by the pilot in command and the exhaustion of usable fuel. Factors were the tailwind landing condition and the rough terrain at the landing site.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI99LA081
- Event ID
- 20001205X00128
- Case number
- CHI99LA081
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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: acc4554565c8f711266c16663e793f0a8db0ad1fb240793ecd73bc79a35b1c2e; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:36:53.013Z.