LAX98LA247 · Cessna 150K
Cessna 150K · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Fullerton Municipal Airport (FUL) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX98LA247
- 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 150K
- 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
- N6377G
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fullerton Municipal Airport (FUL), Fullerton, CATo 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)
- 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, oil › Starvation
- Lubricating system › Flow restricted
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, installation, improper
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Yorba Linda, CA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The student was descending toward the destination airport when the engine began to run rough, then it quit altogether. The CFI took over and attempts to remedy the engine power loss were unsuccessful. During the subsequent forced landing on a city street, the aircraft collided with ground obstructions. Disassembly and examination of the engine revealed a shop rag inside the accessory case in the upper right quadrant just under the starter motor cover plate and entwined in the accessory gears. The oil suction screen was collapsed and heavily contaminated with cloth and lint fragments. The oil sump suction tube inlet was found completely plugged by rag fragments. Typical oil starvation failure signatures were noted to the internal crankshaft pins, rod ends, and bearings. The last entry in the engine logbook was dated July 16, 1998, 7 hours prior to the accident, and listed the removal and replacement of the starter.
Probable cause
An oil starvation failure of the engine due to the mechanic's inadequate maintenance installation and quality control procedures, which resulted in a shop rag being inadvertently left inside the accessory case when the starter was changed 7 hours prior to the accident.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX98LA247
- Event ID
- 20001211X10644
- Case number
- LAX98LA247
- 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 1998-07-29.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 440fa9a50c4efc794b1816bb1e14b34b220dbaa30d0bd78c4864cd65ec531183; retrieved 2026-09-22T17:17:46.465Z.