FTW98LA268 · Cessna 150L
Cessna 150L · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Corpus Christi International Airport (CRP) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98LA268
- 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 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
- N10519
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Corpus Christi International Airport (CRP), Corpus Christi, TXTo 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
- Fuel exhaustion; Wire, transmission; Tree(s)
- 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 › Aircraft preflight, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane impacted a power line and a tree during a forced landing following a loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion. The 72-hour private pilot did not verify the amount of fuel on board the airplane during the pre-flight inspection. When the engine lost power, the pilot initiated a forced landing to a road. However, he misjudged the landing, and the airplane contacted a power line and a tree short of the intended landing site. The airplane then impacted the ground, slid approximately 15 feet, and came to rest upright in the driveway of a residence. Approximately 1 quart of fuel was drained from the airplane's fuel system following the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to ensure that there was adequate fuel for the planned flight on board the airplane during the preflight inspection which resulted in a loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion. A factor was the pilot's misjudgment of the glide distance during the forced landing which resulted in the airplane impacting objects short of the intended landing site.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98LA268
- Event ID
- 20001211X10314
- Case number
- FTW98LA268
- 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 1998-06-13.
- API snapshot SHA-256: efeb452694cf031399d5f16955e30870e59d81eb3428c0644c66b91a91b895d2; retrieved 2026-09-22T17:40:53.100Z.