LAX99LA034 · Cessna 152
Cessna 152 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Corning Municipal Airport (0O4) to Hayward Executive Airport (HWD)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX99LA034
- 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
- N48201
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Corning Municipal Airport (0O4), Corning, CATo Hayward Executive Airport (HWD), Hayward, CA
- 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 contamination; 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Fluid, fuel › Contamination, water
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While in cruise flight at 2,000 feet agl, the aircraft began losing power. About 2 minutes later, the engine lost power completely and the pilot was not able to restart the engine. The aircraft collided with a tree during the subsequent forced landing. The FAA inspector who responded to the site reported that she drained fuel from the tank sumps and gascolator and found the fuel to be contaminated with water at a ratio of approximately 35 percent water to 65 percent fuel. She reported that draining the gascolator also yielded grass and other debris. The carburetor contained about 50 milliliters of water, 2 milliliters of fuel and 8 milliliters of an unknown mold-like substance. The inspector reported that the right fuel tank gasket did not seal. The pilot had received 17 gallons of fuel before takeoff, and reported that the aircraft had been tied down on the ramp for about 3 weeks before the flight. The fuel truck was tested and was found to be within specifications. The pilot stated that he did not remember if he had drained fuel from the tank sumps or gascolator during the preflight.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to water contamination of the fuel. A factor was the pilot's inadequate preflight, during which he neglected to note the contamination, and the dark night which made it difficult to select a landing spot.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX99LA034
- Event ID
- 20001211X11461
- Case number
- LAX99LA034
- 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 1998-11-19.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 2f4a5e25503d4670e50cd96cb367e0244ed19c1f22b408e67d069f1163f5b0ab; retrieved 2026-09-21T11:18:44.635Z.