LAX00LA290 · Cessna 150H
Cessna 150H · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during initial climb
From AJO to AJO
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX00LA290
- 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
- N7011S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From AJOTo AJO
- 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
- 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 › Fuel consumption calculations, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Corona, CA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The airplane lost engine power on takeoff and made an off airport landing in an open field adjacent to the departure end of the runway. After touchdown the nose landing gear dug into the soft dirt and the airplane became inverted. The purpose of the both flights on the day of the accident was to conduct pattern work. The student pilot had flown the accident airplane earlier in the day and noted a loss of power on the climb out, which he attributed to the wind. The engine came back online and he continued the flight. When he came back to land he noted the same loss of power. He shutdown the engine and took a break before flying again. Prior to the accident flight he conducted a preflight. He visually verified, with the fuel gage and checking the fuel tank, that there was 1/4 tank of fuel. He concluded that there was a sufficient amount of fuel for the duration of his flight. No discrepancies were noted with the first takeoff and landing. On the second takeoff, the engine started to lose power and he made an off airport landing. During the recovery, no fuel was found on-scene. The fuel system was inspected and found to be intact. Approximately 1 gallon of fuel was drained from the aircraft to engine fuel line. An engine run was conducted with no discrepancies noted. The airplane was refueled the day before the accident with 9 gallons of fuel, which brought the total amount of fuel on board to 15 gallons. According to flight logs, the airplane flew for 2.2 hours the day before the accident. The pilot stated that he flew .4 hours prior to the accident flight. According to the airplane manufacturer, the airplane burns 3.0 gallons of fuel an hour at a power setting of 1,800 rpm, and 3.5 gallons of fuel is unusable.
Probable cause
The student pilot's inadequate preflight planning which included improper fuel consumption calculations that led to fuel exhaustion and loss of engine power during takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX00LA290
- Event ID
- 20001212X21766
- Case number
- LAX00LA290
- 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: cc380956c56fcc2f1ceb391dc501b195be188d0a1ba12e9a768585ef9f3f2a68; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:36:53.203Z.