ATL98LA033 · Cessna 150L
Cessna 150L · Accident: loss of engine power on approach
From 8AO · ALBERTSVILLE, AL to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL98LA033
- 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 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
- N7443G
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 8AO · ALBERTSVILLE, ALTo 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
- 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
- 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
- Pilot in command › Engine shutdown, intentional
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The passenger stated that he was in the left front seat and reported that he was flying the airplane when the pilot shut the engine down as a simulated engine out. The airplane was about a mile south of the airport when the practice emergency was attempted. After the total loss of engine power, the pilot attempted to restart the engine. When the engine failed to restart, the pilot took the flight controls and elected to ditch the airplane in the river. The left magneto was removed from the engine assembly and bench checked at an approved FAA repair station. The bench check disclosed that the left magneto produced ignition sparks from each ignition lead. After several failed attempts to start the engine, the left magneto was removed again. The second examination disclosed that the secondary side of the magneto coil was inoperative. The magneto coil was replaced with a serviceable component. The engine operated normally after the left magneto was installed. Examination of the right magneto disclosed that the secondary coil was also inoperative.
Probable cause
The pilot's intentional shut down of the engine in flight that resulted in the total loss of engine power. A factor was the failure of both magnetos.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL98LA033
- Event ID
- 20001211X09396
- Case number
- ATL98LA033
- 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 1998-01-18.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 979f9bab14c803b53c53328be2970e7de2ac93d3651b59c2d4b38fd2146d7a89; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:41:49.941Z.