IAD96LA111 · Cessna 150
Cessna 150 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Harry Clever Field (PHD) to 74D · Moundsville, WV
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD96LA111
- 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
- N16095
- Operator
- David & Susan Board
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Harry Clever Field (PHD), New Philadelphia, OHTo 74D · Moundsville, WV
- 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
- 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
- Flightcrew › Became lost/disoriented, inadvertent
- Fluid, fuel › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command(cfi) › In-flight planning/decision, improper
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Supervision, inadequate
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Unsuitable terrain or takeoff/landing/taxi area, selected
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The 30-hour student pilot and certified flight instructor (CFI) were on a cross-country flight, when on the 2nd leg of the flight, a loss of engine power occurred followed by a forced landing. When describing the first leg of the flight, the student stated, 'During most of this flight it was obvious to me that we had very little idea of our position. The planned 40 minute flight actually took us a total of one hour and twenty minutes.' According to the student, 'The fuel level was down about 4 inches...' from the refueling port before departure. The student stated that, 'For the most part, we had no idea of our position during the 2nd leg of this flight either.' He went on to say that about one hour and 15 minutes had elapsed after taking off on the planned 40 minute return leg when '...the engine started revving and then sputtering over and over. As we were looking for a place to land, the engine stopped completely at about 1000 (feet).' The student remembered that he pointed out to the CFI a large open field that he judged suitable for an emergency landing site. He indicated that he was shocked and disappointed the CFI seemed instead determined to land at another site that the student could not identify, which was a small county road located next to a creek.' The airplane subsequently struck a tree, a stream bed, and the roadway, where it came to rest.
Probable cause
the instructor's inadequate supervision by allowing the student and himself to become lost, his inadequate inflight planning/decision by failing to ensure the airplane was safely landed before fuel was exhausted, and his selection of unsuitable terrain for a forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD96LA111
- Event ID
- 20001208X06256
- Case number
- IAD96LA111
- 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: 62a6d42ca7bf1da8b9c8fec91d4b8022d8e6abecbba2a017a1467521d4a60335; retrieved 2026-09-21T12:38:38.348Z.