SEA98LA022 · Cessna 150J
Alternate Air Flying Club Cessna 150J · Accident: loss of engine power while maneuvering
From King County International Airport - Boeing Field (BFI) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA98LA022
- 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 150J
- 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
- N51369
- Operator
- Alternate Air Flying Club
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From King County International Airport - Boeing Field (BFI), Seattle, WATo 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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
- Fuel system, carburetor › Ice
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor stated that as the student pilot was recovering from the third of a series of power-off stalls, the engine began to run rough. Power was applied smoothly and carburetor heat was turned off. The engine continued to run rough, and after approximately five seconds, the engine quit. The flight instructor took over the controls from the student and attempted to restart the engine. During the second restart attempt, the flight instructor pulled the starter handle, however, the handle separated from the panel. A forced landing was made to a soft field where a successful touchdown was accomplished, but during the landing roll, the nose wheel dug in and the airplane nosed over. During the postaccident inspection, the engine was run to 2500 rpm. The engine operated smoothly, with no discrepancies noted. Both magnetos were checked and found operational. The carburetor heat control was checked and found operational. The engine pull-to-start knob was inspected and it was found to have pulled off the metal shaft that runs through the panel, and the metal shaft had pulled away from the cable that runs to the starter lever.
Probable cause
Ice accumulation in the carburetor throat. Factors include conditions conducive to serious carburetor icing, an inoperative starter due to a separated pull-to-start knob, and soft terrain at the location of the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA98LA022
- Event ID
- 20001208X09384
- Case number
- SEA98LA022
- 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 1997-12-10.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 1af3b2be4e532d16345dc8ee879d0981a746d6ffb0971897e6070c552dac762c; retrieved 2026-09-22T18:09:14.561Z.