FTW98FA024 · Cessna 150M
Cessna 150M · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Deming Municipal Airport (DMN) to Eloy Municipal Airport (E60)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98FA024
- 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
- 1 · 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 150M
- 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
- N6206K
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Possible conflict
- From Deming Municipal Airport (DMN)To Eloy Municipal Airport (E60), Eloy, AZ
- 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 contamination
- 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
- Terrain condition › None suitable
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane had been both hangared and kept outdoors since the summer of 1995. In May 1997, the Deming City Administrator observed the pilot transferring fuel from the sump of a 10,000 gallon fuel storage tank into a fuel truck. The pilot told him that he was bypassing the tank's sump to meet the fixed base operator (FBO) needs (the pilot was also the FBO manager). Approximately one month before the accident, the pilot told an FBO employee that he had drained the airplane's fuel tanks and asked that they be refilled. The employee said he put 14 to 15 gallons of fuel in the airplane (fuel capacity is 26 gallons). On the day of the accident, the pilot found the airplane's battery dead. He hand started the engine and departed for California. The alternator needs at least 3 volts current to energize its magnetic field for electrical power generation. The airplane was last seen flying west at an estimated altitude of 400 to 500 feet agl. The wreckage was found the next day in soft, sandy soil on level terrain, covered by 2 to 5 feet tall brush. Postcrash examination revealed that the flaps were up, and the gascolator and fuel tanks contained a fluid other than aviation fuel.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power due to fuel contamination. Contributing was unsuitable terrain consisting of high vegetation and sand.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98FA024
- Event ID
- 20001208X08995
- Case number
- FTW98FA024
- 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: ecf5008f0e1638e71abbfdf4913be2939d7611e37a101a7526c04b2b285b1c75; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:47:12.731Z.