FTW98LA132 · Cessna 152
Airman Flight School Cessna 152 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during takeoff
From University of Oklahoma Westheimer Airport (OUN) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98LA132
- 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 152
- 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
- N5128Q
- Operator
- Airman Flight School
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From University of Oklahoma Westheimer Airport (OUN)To 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
- Takeoff
- 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 › Refueling, not performed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Three hours after beginning a solo cross country flight, the student pilot entered traffic for touch and go landings. On the second takeoff climb, at about 1,400 or 1,500 feet msl, the engine lost power. A forced landing was initiated to a road. The aircraft touched down towards the end of the road, and during the landing roll, the nose landing gear struck a curb and separated from the fuselage. Prior to preflight, the 76 hour student pilot called for the fuel truck. While he was in the airplane, the service person was on the ladder supposedly fueling the airplane. The service person got down from the ladder and told him the 'fuel was fine.' The student pilot did not verify the fuel level. The aircraft had been flown only one hour since it had been fueled two days prior. Examination of the fuel system revealed that it had not been compromised, and there was no usable fuel in either fuel tank. Both fuel gauges indicated zero. Five gallons of fuel was added to one of the fuel tanks and its corresponding fuel gauge indicated the proper amount of fuel.
Probable cause
Fuel exhaustion due to the student pilot's failure to refuel. A factor was the lack of suitable terrain for the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98LA132
- Event ID
- 20001211X09549
- Case number
- FTW98LA132
- 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: 12c868024cd5f79fe83fc85fdd6912df602cca8a1ebc15a62df8e300a54f9ef4; retrieved 2026-09-22T18:01:46.748Z.