CHI99FA052 · Cessna 152
University of Dubuque Cessna 152 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Dubuque Regional Airport (DBQ) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI99FA052
- 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
- 1 · 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
- N5314B
- Operator
- University of Dubuque
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dubuque Regional Airport (DBQ), Dubuque, IATo 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Airspeed, low
- Pilot in command › Operation with known deficiencies in equipment, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported the airplane was experiencing a degradation of power while practicing touch and go landings at an outlying field. He decided to fly back to the original departure airport, 21 miles away. He did not indicate over the radio what kind of problem the airplane was experiencing. He attempted to execute a forced landing. A ground witness reported the airplane barely cleared powerlines as it followed the contours of a field. He reported the airplane was flying low and slow at about 50 feet when it nosedived and flipped over and started burning. The main wreckage was located 80 feet from the initial ground scar on a heading of 080 degrees. The wind was from 250 degrees at 8 knots. The right wingtip had leading edge crush marks. The left wing's leading edge was crushed from the strut attach point to the wingtip. The cabin was destroyed by fire. The propeller blades were undamaged except for forward bending at the blade tips. The right and left magnetos received fire damage. The engine teardown and airframe inspection revealed no pre-impact anomalies.
Probable cause
the pilot continued flying with a known discrepancy and he failed to maintain airspeed and lost control of the airplane while attempting a forced landing. Factors included the tailwind and the undetermined loss of power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI99FA052
- Event ID
- 20001211X11520
- Case number
- CHI99FA052
- 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: b577f8f08b73f7c9e55724d9066d8770f874d9b0cc97b2c3e905a22913b3ac97; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:18:04.117Z.