LAX95LA074 · Cessna 152
Cessna 152 · Accident: forced landing en route
From an unrecorded airport to Q99 · San Martin, CA
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX95LA074
- 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
- N25953
- Operator
- Yuzo Wakita
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Q99 · San Martin, CA
- 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
- Forced landing
- 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
- Dual student › Mixture, inadvertent deactivation
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Supervision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE STUDENT PILOT WAS PRACTICING SIMULATED ENGINE FAILURE FORCED LANDINGS WITH HIS INSTRUCTOR. DURING ONE OF THE APPROACHES, THE STUDENT INADVERTENTLY PULLED OUT THE MIXTURE CONTROL HANDLE TOO FAR AND THE ENGINE QUIT. ATTEMPTS TO RESTART THE ENGINE BY THE INSTRUCTOR WERE UNSUCCESSFUL. THE INSTRUCTOR LANDED THE AIRCRAFT IN A MUDDY FIELD AND IT NOSED OVER. THE AIRCRAFT WAS RECOVERED AND EXAMINED. AFTER THE EXAMINATION, THE ENGINE WAS STARTED AND IT OPERATED NORMALLY. THERE WERE NO MECHANICAL PROBLEMS FOUND DURING THE EXAMINATION OR THE ENGINE RUN.
Probable cause
The improper supervision of the student pilot by the instructor by allowing the student to inadvertently pull the mixture control handle too far out causing the engine to lose power. The wet terrain condition was a factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX95LA074
- Event ID
- 20001207X02882
- Case number
- LAX95LA074
- 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: efb77b85dd5c226335f23db52bb07dfda6954adf174f9beac9f9db7e079a7763; retrieved 2026-09-23T00:20:32.374Z.