CHI97LA172 · Cessna 150K
Cessna 150K · Accident: partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical) on approach
From Kalamazoo/Battle Creek International Airport (AZO) to Willow Run Airport (YIP)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI97LA172
- 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 150K
- 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
- N5738G
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kalamazoo/Battle Creek International Airport (AZO), Kalamazoo, MITo Willow Run Airport (YIP)
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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 (non-mechanical)
- 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
- Fuel system, carburetor › Ice
- Pilot in command › Carburetor heat, improper use of
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said that he was on final approach at reduced power when the engine began to run rough. He 'began to add power, but there was no response from the engine. [I] began an engine restart after the engine quit and I saw that I would be short of the runway. [The] restart was unsuccessful.' The pilot elected to land in a parking lot near the airport. During the landing, the airplane 'hit a rut which threw the airplane to the left and struck [two] signs.' The airplane then rolled to a stop. Examination of the airplane revealed that the carburetor heat knob was in the 'off' position. No other anomalies were found. The temperature and dew point were 62 and 54 degrees, respectively. According to icing probability charts, conditions were conducive for carburetor icing.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to use carburetor heat, which resulted in carburetor ice, loss of engine power, and a forced landing. Factors relating to this accident were: the icing (weather) condition and sign(s) in the emergency landing area.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI97LA172
- Event ID
- 20001208X08085
- Case number
- CHI97LA172
- 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: 7f3960cde8c92c15818ade7f14e4fcef411bbfa9ed1836c2f850a81199c687bf; retrieved 2026-09-22T19:27:03.231Z.