LAX97LA322 · Cessna 150L
Cessna 150L · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) on approach
From Daniel K. Inouye International Airport (HNL) to Hilo International Airport (ITO)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX97LA322
- 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 150L
- 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
- N18503
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Daniel K. Inouye International Airport (HNL), Honolulu, HITo Hilo International Airport (ITO)
- 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
- 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 › Aircraft preflight, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Fuel management, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The aircraft lost power while on approach approximately 9 miles south of the airport. Subsequently, it nosed over during a landing in tall grass. The hobbs meter showed the duration of flight to be a total of 3.1 hours. The aircraft held 26 total gallons of fuel, with 22.5 usable. The second pilot reported to the mechanic/owner that they 'were flying at about 110 MPH, they were not at altitude, and they did little leaning.' According to the Cessna Pilot Operating Handbook (POH) for the 150L, the aircraft will burn approximately 7 gallons per hour at 2,500 feet msl with full power and using 92 percent horsepower. The POH specifies the total range to be 3.2 hours for those specific conditions. No fuel was found remaining in or around the aircraft after the accident, and the surrounding vegetation did not show signs of fuel spillage. Neither pilot reported how fuel quantity was verified or how much fuel they had on board before departure. The engine was examined by a licensed airframe and powerplant mechanic, who found no discrepancies.
Probable cause
failure of the pilot to verify the quantity of fuel before departure, and to monitor fuel consumption during the flight, which led to fuel exhaustion, loss of engine power, and a forced landing. Tall grass in the emergency landing was a related factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX97LA322
- Event ID
- 20001208X08886
- Case number
- LAX97LA322
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1997-09-12.
- API snapshot SHA-256: e18097fc000f7067d1124fcee6227f4e63c728fc5e58883e7129fc8f6270a78b; retrieved 2026-09-21T11:49:18.647Z.