BFO96LA020 · Cessna 150F
Cessna 150F · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during initial climb
From I11 to I11
Event
- NTSB case
- BFO96LA020
- 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 150F
- 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
- N7089F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From I11To I11
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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 starvation
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Fluid, fuel › Starvation
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Fuel supply, inadequate
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor (CFI) stated that before flight, he performed the airplane preflight inspection, and he estimated the total fuel on board was 12 gallons. He and the student pilot flew in the local area for approximately 50 minutes, then returned to the airport to practice touch and go landings. During the initial climb after a touch and go landing, the airplane lost engine power. The CFI stated that the airplane was approximately 100 feet AGL when the power loss occurred, and he made a forced landing in a soft, plowed field. The airplane nosed over and came to rest inverted. An FAA Inspector stated that there was no evidence of spilled fuel, and the fuel tanks were not compromised. He drained 3 3/4 gallons of aviation fuel total from both wing tanks. The POH indicated that the airplane fuel system had a capacity of 38 gallons of fuel, of which 3 gallons were unuseable. The airplane manual also stated that '...in certain flight maneuvers, the fuel may move away from the fuel tank supply outlet...fuel flow to the engine may be interrupted....'
Probable cause
inadequate preflight planning/preparation by the flight instructor (CFI), which resulted in a loss of engine power during initial climb, due to an inadequate supply of fuel and fuel starvation. The soft terrain encountered during the forced landing was a related factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record BFO96LA020
- Event ID
- 20001207X04813
- Case number
- BFO96LA020
- 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: ca2169293fcd549523858d1fcdcfd649325c0724500277db54bb864ea588d717; retrieved 2026-09-22T23:04:19.722Z.