FTW00LA094 · Cessna 152
Cessna 152 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) on approach
From Fort Worth Meacham International Airport (FTW) to Chennault International Airport (CWF)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW00LA094
- 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 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
- N68333
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fort Worth Meacham International Airport (FTW), Fort Worth, TXTo Chennault International Airport (CWF)
- 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
- Approach
- 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
- Pilot in command › Refueling, not performed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot planned a 265 nautical mile flight that he thought would take about 3.1 hours. The airplane departed with both fuel tanks full, flew at 2,500 feet, and at a power setting of 2,300 rpm. The pilot did not lean the mixture during the flight. The airplane was descending through 1,000 feet, near the destination airport, when the engine rpm began increasing and decreasing. Subsequently, the engine lost total power and the pilot executed a forced landing to a field. During post-accident examination of the airplane, an FAA inspector drained 1.5 gallons of fuel from the left fuel tank and .05 gallons from the right fuel tank. Total fuel capacity was 26 gallons, of which 24.5 gallons were useable. Based on the performance charts in the POH for the C-152, and the altitude and power setting the pilot stated were used, the airplane would have had an endurance of 3.7 hours with a 45 minute reserve at 45% power. This endurance assumes leaning the mixture in cruise flight. According to the recording hour meter in the airplane, the duration of the flight was 3.7 hours. A friend of the pilot, who flew another C-152 on the same route, at the same altitude and power setting, landed his airplane at the destination successfully. A fuel receipt indicated that his airplane was fueled with 24.1 gallons of fuel. He reported that he leaned the mixture during cruise flight.
Probable cause
The failure of the pilot to refuel the airplane which resulted in fuel exhaustion. Factors were the pilot's poor preflight planning, failure to lean the mixture in accordance with the POH, and lack of suitable terrain for the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW00LA094
- Event ID
- 20001212X20628
- Case number
- FTW00LA094
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2000-03-10.
- API snapshot SHA-256: a746c4a7ce6308cb54f41473636399bf57206a10843413227f3863a5e0f257ef; retrieved 2026-09-22T13:04:12.024Z.