SEA96LA082 · Cessna 150
Cessna 150 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From U42 · WEST JORDON, UT to Milford Municipal-Ben and Judy Briscoe Field (MLF)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA96LA082
- 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 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
- N8873S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From U42 · WEST JORDON, UTTo Milford Municipal-Ben and Judy Briscoe Field (MLF), Milford, UT
- 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
- 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; Pole; Tree(s)
- 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, improper
- Pilot in command › Fuel supply, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot performed a forced landing after a sudden loss of engine power. She attempted a forced landing in a shopping mall parking lot. However, before landing, the airplane collided with a flexible flag pole and tree, and was substantially damaged. The airplane remained suspended in the tree until rescue personnel arrived. The student pilot received minor injuries. Both fuel tanks remained uncompromised and were inspected after the accident; no evidence of fuel was found. Also, no preimpact mechanical deficiency was found. The pilot stated that she may have exhausted the airplane's fuel supply during the flight. Investigation revealed that she had utilized inaccurate information to perform fuel consumption calculations, and that she took on an inadequate amount of fuel at her last departure point. The student pilot had deviated from the flight plan that was endorsed by the flight instructor.
Probable cause
the student pilot's inadequate preflight planning/preparation, by failuring to properly calculate the fuel consumption of the airplane, which led to fuel exhaustion and loss of power during cruise flight, due to an inadequate supply of fuel. A factor relating to the accident was: the lack of suitable terrain for a forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA96LA082
- Event ID
- 20001208X05671
- Case number
- SEA96LA082
- 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: dcf33410fe6ebd2092829db3ce4cd2334edfb1ada9a04ff5922a4ef827fb97d2; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:53:58.440Z.