SEA00LA045 · Cessna 150H
Cessna 150H · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Albany Municipal Airport (S12) to Coeur D'Alene Airport - Pappy Boyington Field (COE)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA00LA045
- 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
- N50348
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Albany Municipal Airport (S12), Albany, ORTo Coeur D'Alene Airport - Pappy Boyington Field (COE), Coeur d'Alene, ID
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While on a long cross-country flight, the pilot noticed that the aircraft had used considerably more fuel than it should have, and that he was then low on fuel. While attempting to get to an airport for a precautionary landing, the engine lost power. The pilot lined up to land in an open field, but as he got lower, he realized it was full of large rocks and was too bumpy. He therefore tried to land on a dirt road which sat between a power line on one side and a barbed wire fence on the other. During the landing flare, the aircraft contacted the fence resulting in a yaw that brought it in contact with a series of fence posts. An investigation revealed that the aircraft's fuel storage and distribution system had leaked considerable fuel, and that the fuel quantity sensing system was very unreliable.
Probable cause
Exhaustion of the fuel supply due to a leaking fuel tank system. Factors contributing to the accident were, inaccurate fuel quantity sensors, the lack of suitable terrain in the area of the forced landing, and a fence alongside the dirt upon which the pilot attempted the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA00LA045
- Event ID
- 20001212X20570
- Case number
- SEA00LA045
- 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: 02d88d45a0a019a7071be086514a44cae2686a44566badd0dde734cf20e1debe; retrieved 2026-09-22T13:10:54.766Z.