FTW00LA054 · Cessna 150H
Sky Park Aviation Cessna 150H · Accident: loss of engine power during initial climb
From T69 to T69
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW00LA054
- 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 150H
- 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
- N7290S
- Operator
- Sky Park Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From T69To T69
- 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
- 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 exhaustion
- 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 › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command › Refueling, not performed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the pre-flight inspection, the pilot visually noted each wing fuel tank was 1/2 full and the fuel quantity gauges indicated 3/4 full. The pilot flew to an airport 27 nautical miles away, and performed one touch-and-go landing. During the return flight, the pilot observed that the right fuel tank quantity gauge indicated 1/4 full and the left fuel tank quantity gauge indicated 3/4 full. Upon arrival, the pilot performed a touch-and-go landing on runway 32, and during the takeoff, climbing through 300 feet, the engine lost power. The pilot initiated a forced landing, and attempted a 180 degree turn toward the airport. Subsequently, the airplane touched down, went over a gravel road and stopped in a ditch, 750 feet short of the approach end of runway 14. The operator drained the remaining fuel out of both fuel tank sump drains, for a total of 1 3/4 gallons of fuel. The unusable fuel quantity of this make and model airplane is 3.5 gallons.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to refuel the airplane, which resulted in a loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion. 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 FTW00LA054
- Event ID
- 20001212X20247
- Case number
- FTW00LA054
- 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: 322d6c72975c2801b44915e088edd020c2153a8453d3bd40e492ed1485b71ed9; retrieved 2026-09-22T13:30:07.526Z.