NYC99LA058 · Cessna 152
Cessna 152 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Duanesburg Airport (4B1) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC99LA058
- 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 152
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 152
- 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
- N89097
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Duanesburg Airport (4B1), DUANESBURG, NYTo not recorded
- 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 · descent
- 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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
- Tree(s)
- 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
- Fuel system, carburetor › Ice
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Carburetor heat, improper use of
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The instructor and student preflighted the airplane, completed the engine run-up checks, and departed. Then, in the vicinity of a local airport, at 2,500 feet msl, the instructor initiated the first of two simulated engine failures. The student maneuvered the airplane and executed a touched-and-go. Then, while on downwind, and at 2,000 feet msl, the instructor initiated the second simulated engine failure. The student insured the carburetor heat was on, simulated checking the throttle, and began maneuvering for the runway. At 400 feet agl, the instructor realized they would not make the runway. He advised the student, and advanced the throttle, but the engine did not respond. He was able to insure that the throttle and fuel selector were properly set before the airplane stuck a tree, stalled, and impacted the ground. There was no evidence of a pre impact failure that would have caused a loss of power. Weather conditions were conducive for serious icing with cruise or climb power, and the FAA recommended, ' that carburetor heat be applied before reducing power and that partial power be used during letdown to prevent icing....'
Probable cause
The instructor pilot's improper use of carburetor heat which resulted in carburetor ice, and a loss of engine power. A factor in the accident was the instructor pilot's failure to initiate the simulated engine failure from a point where a successful forced landing could be completed.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC99LA058
- Event ID
- 20001205X00231
- Case number
- NYC99LA058
- 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: 6f0c3d7fd174a4b7d8a8bed8071ca6f9b8b7f7e82e079a74f8a0d89f0acd5d1b; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:36:22.628Z.