NYC98LA037 · Cessna A152
Cessna A152 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Francis S Gabreski Airport (FOK) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC98LA037
- 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 A152
- 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
- N758YR
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Francis S Gabreski Airport (FOK), WESTHAMPTON BCH, NYTo 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 · 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
- Pole
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The instructor preflighted the airplane and measured the fuel quantity with a calibrated stick, with 8 gallons in one tank, and 7 gallons in the other tank. After takeoff, the airplane had been cruising at 2,700 feet for about 1 hour when the instructor reported that they lost all or most engine power. The engine backfired 4 or 5 times and all attempts to restore engine power were unsuccessful. The instructor performed a forced landing to a parking lot and the airplane's left wing struck a light pole. Examination of the airplane by a Federal Aviation Administration Inspector revealed that one wing fuel tank was ripped open, but neither wing fuel tank contained fuel and there was no odor of fuel on the ground. Refueling records revealed that after the airplane had been refueled to 20 total gallons, it was flown about 8/10 hours before the accident flight. The average fuel consumption of the engine had been 6.8 gallons per hour. According to a carburetor icing probability chart, the conditions at the time of the accident were conducive for 'serious icing at cruise power.'
Probable cause
A loss of engine power for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC98LA037
- Event ID
- 20001208X09358
- Case number
- NYC98LA037
- 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 1997-12-02.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 2074c223b89324e856f54913e24683f4a7397d855dd30d4f18e09288227e8e69; retrieved 2026-09-21T11:43:34.062Z.