CHI96LA072 · Cessna 150M
Grand Air Aviation Cessna 150M · Accident: partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Abrams Municipal Airport (4D0) to Mount Pleasant Municipal Airport (MOP)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI96LA072
- 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
- N8375U
- Operator
- Grand Air Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Abrams Municipal Airport (4D0), Grand Ledge, MITo Mount Pleasant Municipal Airport (MOP)
- 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
- Partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- 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
- Engine assembly, connecting rod › Failure, total
- Fluid, oil › Starvation
- Lubricating system, oil filler cap › Loose
- Pilot in command › Aircraft preflight, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was 4 miles from the airport when the airplane started to shake violently and the engine rpm dropped to 1500. He moved the mixture control to the rich position, turned on the carburetor heat and performed his checks, but couldn't find anything wrong. He then reported to approach control that the airplane was having engine trouble and was losing altitude, but that he had the airport in sight, and that he could make the field. As the pilot turned toward the airport, the engine rpm dropped to 1000, and the airplane began to lose altitude rapidly. The pilot made a forced landing on the airport 400 feet short of the runway, and the airplane nosed over in snow. Examination of the wreckage at the site revealed that the #1 cylinder connecting rod had failed due to oil starvation. The oil cap to the crankcase was found loose.
Probable cause
the student pilot's inadequate preflight and the loose oil filler cap, which resulted in oil starvation and failure of the #1 cylinder connecting rod. A factor relating to this accident was the snow covered terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI96LA072
- Event ID
- 20001208X05110
- Case number
- CHI96LA072
- 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: ba7b5d9d25b209032ced4c64020ca3aa340fc9916e8d48d1fbd3198d73efa01a; retrieved 2026-09-22T22:52:53.238Z.