ATL99LA034 · Cessna 152
Cessna 152 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From City of Murfreesboro Airport (MBT) to Huntsville International Airport (HSV)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL99LA034
- 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
- N5144B
- Operator
- Kyle Flood
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From City of Murfreesboro Airport (MBT), Murfreesboro, TNTo Huntsville International Airport (HSV), Huntsville, AL
- 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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
- 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 › Contamination, water
- Pilot in command › Aircraft preflight, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot reported that approximately forty-five minutes into the flight, the engine rpm dropped and subsequently lost power. Attempts by the student pilot to restore full engine power, failed. The student pilot made an emergency landing in an open field. Examination of the airplane disclosed that the nose gear assembly had sheared off and, that the engine firewall had sustained impact damage. The examination also revealed that a fuel line in the vicinity of the chin cowling had also ruptured and an unknown quantity of fuel was spilled. Approximately a quart of liquid was recovered from the fuel system; 90% of the liquid was clear water. Water was also discovered in the carburetor bowl, and the filter assembly. Reportedly the airplane was refueled about two days before the accident, and subsequent to the refueling, the area experienced severe thunderstorm activity. Security of the fuel caps after the refueling was not confirmed. The pilot did not report checking and securing the fuel caps during the preflight inspection.
Probable cause
Water contamination of the fuel supply, resulting from the pilot's inadequate preflight inspection.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL99LA034
- Event ID
- 20001211X11516
- Case number
- ATL99LA034
- 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: 920aac374edfa54ffe0b1afe0c18752bb38063ba222b8e76dbc5ca89a9608afc; retrieved 2026-09-22T16:09:28.926Z.