CHI00LA046 · Cessna 150B
Cessna 150B · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From North Omaha Airport (3NO) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI00LA046
- 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 150B
- 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
- N7339X
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From North Omaha Airport (3NO)To 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 · climb to 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Carburetor heat, improper use of
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Omaha, NE, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The aircraft experienced an engine failure after departure. The certified flight instructor (CFI) executed a forced landing on a road where the aircraft wing contacted a semi-truck. A postaccident examination revealed no preexisting anomalies with respect to the aircraft or aircraft systems. The CFI reported no mechanical malfunction. A weather report stated a temperature of 32 degrees F., and a dewpoint of 28 degrees F. According to the carburetor icing chart by Transport Canada, the temperature and dewpoint at the time of the accident fall within the range of serious icing potential. FAA AC 20-113 states, 'When the relative humidity is above 50 percent and the temperature is below 70 degrees F., apply carburetor heat briefly immediately before takeoff, particularly with float type carburetors, to remove any ice which may have been accumulated during taxi and runup.'
Probable cause
The pilots failure to use carburetor heat during takeoff in weather conducive for serious carburetor ice. Factors were the weather that was conducive for carburetor icing and the presence of the truck that the aircraft impacted.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI00LA046
- Event ID
- 20001212X20207
- Case number
- CHI00LA046
- 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: 6f5f853fb277f4205799b0c4bc142c725709f7f64aebc24334e30b2fc9f1f165; retrieved 2026-09-22T13:33:13.338Z.