FTW96FA143 · Cessna 150
Cessna 150 · Accident en route
From Lea County Regional Airport (HOB) to Q24 · Levelland, TX
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW96FA143
- 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
- 1 · 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 150
- 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
- N66362
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lea County Regional Airport (HOB), Hobbs, NMTo Q24 · Levelland, TX
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Fluid, fuel › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command › Planning/decision, improper
- Pilot in command › Remedial action, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot (an Egyptian national) departed on his initial solo crosscountry flight at 1500. He became lost on the first leg, and after receiving navigation assistance from ATC, made a full stop landing at his planned interim airport about 2 hours and 16 minutes after departure. A ramp attendant said the student seemed 'very nervous.' The ramp attendant asked the student if he wanted to refuel, but the student refused. The student departed the interim airport at 1750. About 50 minutes later, he became lost again. Pilots of other aircraft and ATC attempted to help the student via radio, but where not successful. When asked if his VOR was functioning, the student replied, 'its out of order, [and it] says OFF and I can't get a TO or FROM.' After nightfall, the airplane hit a power line and crashed on the shoulder of a highway about 60 miles north of the intended destination. No fuel spillage was detected at the site, and only about 1 gallon of fuel was found remaining in the fuel tanks. The total flight time without refueling was about 4 hours and 21 minutes; the last 30 minutes was at night. According to performance charts, fuel consumption would have been about 5.6 gallons per hour. Fuel capacity was 26 gallons of which 22.5 gallons were usable. The pilot had a total of 27.6 hrs of day VFR flight time, no night time, and 1.6 hrs of solo time. No preimpact mechanical defect was found. No record was found that the pilot's flight instructor or flight school had contacted FAA authorities to inquire about the overdue aircraft.
Probable cause
improper planning/decision by the student pilot, and his failure to take adequate remedial action after becoming lost and encountering a low fuel situation, which subsequently resulted in fuel exhaustion, loss of engine power, and a forced landing at night. Factors relating to the accident were: the student pilot became lost/disoriented, inadequate supervision by the flight instructor (CFI), darkness, and the inability of the student pilot to see the power lines during an emergency landing at night.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW96FA143
- Event ID
- 20001208X05391
- Case number
- FTW96FA143
- 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 1996-03-10.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 7ce989086615ec03b713c82b242641acf54efce441ea5a345b5418799c257263; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:24:52.412Z.