LAX96LA011 · Cessna 150M
Long Beach Flying Club Cessna 150M · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From GVT · Las Vegas, NV to Long Beach International Airport (LGB)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX96LA011
- 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
- N704QJ
- Operator
- Long Beach Flying Club
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From GVT · Las Vegas, NVTo Long Beach International Airport (LGB), Long Beach, 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 · 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
- 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; Wire, transmission
- 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 › Fuel consumption calculations, not performed
- Pilot in command › Mixture, improper use of
- Pilot in command › Performance data, not used
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Brea, CA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
Shortly before the accident, the pilot contacted Fullerton ATCT and requested assistance in finding the airport. Transcripts of air-to-ground communications and verbal statements from the controllers indicated that the pilot seemed disoriented. The pilot reported losing engine power at a point about 8 miles east of the airport. The airplane collided with power lines during a forced landing. The aircraft recovery firm who picked up the aircraft reported that the fuel system was intact. Two gallons of fuel was drained from the right tank, and about 4 ounces from the left. The pilot said that a higher than anticipated fuel consumption was due to insufficient mixture leaning and the use of a higher rpm setting than planned in order to maintain a desired airspeed.
Probable cause
fuel exhaustion due to the pilot's improper leaning procedures and his failure to use the performance charts in the pilot operating handbook to determine fuel consumption rates for the selected cruise power setting.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX96LA011
- Event ID
- 20001207X04724
- Case number
- LAX96LA011
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1995-10-16.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 90b68de9e2e75697bea7b465a3a76b32623a8624265ef0053612071199dbe867; retrieved 2026-09-21T22:02:15.285Z.