FTW99LA185 · Cessna 150M
Cessna 150M · Accident: partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure) during initial climb
From M70 to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW99LA185
- 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 150M
- 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
- N7660U
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From M70To 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- 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
- Carburetor heat control, cable/push-pull rod › Fractured
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor noted a partial loss of engine power during initial takeoff climb from runway 36. Suspecting carburetor ice, he pulled the carburetor heat lever to the full hot (out) position, and the knob, with a portion of the control cable still attached, came all the way out. The power available with full carburetor heat on was not sufficient to maintain a climb rate. The flight instructor maneuvered the airplane to avoid trees and obstacles until he was able to execute a forced landing to an open field. During the landing roll in the soft dirt, the airplane nosed over and came to rest in the inverted position. Examination of the carburetor heat control cable confirmed that the control cable was fractured, and the carburetor heat lever was in the full 'on' position. Based on the physical appearance of the control cable, the flight instructor suspected that the cable was 'original equipment.' A review of the maintenance records by the FAA inspector revealed that the airplane had accumulated a total of 6,837 flight hours since new.
Probable cause
The failure of the carburetor heat control cable which resulted in a partial loss of engine power during initial takeoff climb. A factor was the lack of suitable terrain for the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW99LA185
- Event ID
- 20001212X19266
- Case number
- FTW99LA185
- 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: 1a26288f5b27c01274f886ef8c7e260be960aeff0d3dbabba68c3bcceba8a659; retrieved 2026-09-22T14:36:12.079Z.