IAD96LA150 · Cessna 150G
Cessna 150G · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From North Central State Airport (SFZ) to Gardner Municipal Airport (GDM)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD96LA150
- 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 150G
- 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
- N2607J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From North Central State Airport (SFZ), Pawtucket, RITo Gardner Municipal Airport (GDM), Gardner, MA
- 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; 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Fluid, fuel › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command › Became lost/disoriented, inadvertent
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Templeton, MA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot planned a 5 leg cross-country flight. A flight instructor (CFI) reviewed and approved the flight plan with an option of various locations to refuel. The student departed later than anticipated. He stated that the first 4 legs were uneventful, but he realized that darkness would affect his final leg. The student checked his flight planning and believed he had enough fuel to reach his destination without stopping, and that he would arrive before darkness. About half way on his final leg with the sun setting, the student pilot calculated 17 minutes to his destination and 75 minutes of fuel remaining. After arrival at his destination, the student was unable to find the airport. He requested assistance from a Flight Service Station, was located, then handed off to Boston Center. During a vector to the nearest airport, the engine lost power. The student pilot maintained best glide airspeed until tree top level, then stalled (landed) the airplane into the trees. Examination of the airplane revealed no usable fuel in the tanks. The airplane had flown 3.7 hours since its last refueling. The student pilot had not received any night flight instruction.
Probable cause
the student pilot's improper in-flight decision to continued the cross-country flight into night conditions, and his inability to find the destination (or an alternate airport) in a timely manner, which resulted in fuel exhaustion, forced landing, and in-flight collision with trees. Factors related to the accident were: darkness, and the student pilot's lack of night experience.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD96LA150
- Event ID
- 20001208X06758
- Case number
- IAD96LA150
- 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: c8bc74c3204312638fc0957647579dfa6e1fbfad2e1b2a756b59b32372bf30c5; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:35:12.087Z.