SEA97LA146 · Cessna 150H
Cessna 150H · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From 2OR7 · OR to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA97LA146
- 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 150H
- 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
- N6599S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 2OR7 · ORTo not recorded
- 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 · descent
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he fueled the airplane with 5.5 gallons of auto fuel and dipped the airplane's fuel tanks before takeoff (stating in his accident report that 'I must have misread the fuel dipstick.') The pilot was unable to provide a record of the most recent fueling. He reported the aircraft usable fuel quantity at takeoff as 13 gallons (usable fuel capacity is 22.5 gallons for standard tanks, with which the accident airplane was manufactured.) He stated that as the airplane was descending for landing, 4 to 5 miles from the airport, the engine stopped. The pilot was unable to glide to the airport, and turned toward an alternate field. The plane landed, hit a blackberry patch and an embankment, and spun onto a two-lane road where it came to rest. The accident occurred 1 hour and 12 minutes after takeoff (fuel burn at 65% power is about 5 gallons per hour.) An FAA inspector found only 1 1/2 gallons of fuel on board the aircraft at the accident scene (unusable fuel is 3 to 3 1/2 gallons.) No evidence of an inflight fuel leak or engine malfunction was found.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight preparation and his inadequate inflight planning which resulted in fuel exhaustion. A factor was lack of suitable terrain for a forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA97LA146
- Event ID
- 20001208X08262
- Case number
- SEA97LA146
- 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: ade7d987848e9db9cf4f04e15ca05bdf87ddb6beca06336ca04c09abae98f140; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:25:00.865Z.