NYC98LA188 · Cessna 152
Cessna 152 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) on approach
From Nashua Airport / Boire Field (ASH) to BDL · WINDSOR LOCKS, NH
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC98LA188
- 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
- N307DW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Nashua Airport / Boire Field (ASH), Nashua, NHTo BDL · WINDSOR LOCKS, NH
- 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
- 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(cfi) › Supervision, inadequate
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Ellington, CT, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot and instructor planned on a night cross-country flight of 1 hour duration. The student pilot reported there was 2 hours of fuel onboard and the flight instructor accepted his word. The engine lost power as they neared their destination. The pilot picked an airport with non-standard, low intensity runway lights, and no rotating beacon for an emergency landing. When they finally acquired the field visually, there was insufficient altitude to reach it. The airplane landed in an open field with soft terrain and flipped over. Post accident interviews disclosed the student pilot had performed the pre-flight inspection. In addition, he was not familiar with the use of a device to measure the quantity of fuel in the tanks.
Probable cause
Was the flight instructors lack of supervision over the student pilot's preflight inspection of the airplane, and which resulted in fuel exhaustion. Factors were the night conditions and the soft terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC98LA188
- Event ID
- 20001211X11154
- Case number
- NYC98LA188
- 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 1998-09-17.
- API snapshot SHA-256: dc50664d65d33c7f7c02c7a4da8dd655421bb44e90b444f4243c2b3fc523a740; retrieved 2026-09-22T16:47:35.049Z.