LAX97LA321 · Cessna 152
Carlsbad Air Service Cessna 152 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From McClellan-Palomar Airport (CRQ) to French Valley Airport (F70)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX97LA321
- 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 152
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 152
- 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
- N65406
- Operator
- Carlsbad Air Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From McClellan-Palomar Airport (CRQ), Carlsbad, CATo French Valley Airport (F70), Temecula, CA
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Fluid, fuel › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Aircraft preflight, inadequate
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Fuel consumption calculations, improper
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Murrieta, CA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
While on a dual instruction flight, the aircraft ran out of fuel prior to arriving at the destination airport. The flight instructor reported that the fuel tanks were low; however, both indicator gauges read ample fuel quantity for a 1-1/2 hour flight with 1/2 hour reserve. The aircraft had been airborne for about 1 hour 20 minutes when the engine lost power. Subsequently, the airplane was damaged during a forced landing on a road.
Probable cause
failure of the flight instructor (CFI) to ensure an adequate preflight of the airplane, and his failure to properly quantify or verify the fuel onboard before departing on a dual instruction flight, which resulted in fuel exhaustion and a forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX97LA321
- Event ID
- 20001208X08885
- Case number
- LAX97LA321
- 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: caf7e409dadb520604f900ab9c19dd815248c027bca295893f7d306f5e1984d4; retrieved 2026-09-22T18:39:32.006Z.