SEA01LA010 · Cessna 150C
Cessna 150C · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From FRI · Friday Harbor, WA to Bremerton National Airport (PWT)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA01LA010
- 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 150C
- 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
- N7886Z
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From FRI · Friday Harbor, WATo Bremerton National Airport (PWT), Bremerton, WA
- 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 · descent
- 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 and passenger departed Friday Harbor, Washington, in the Cessna 150C with 9.0 gallons of fuel on board. They were destined for Bremerton, Washington, approximately 63 nautical miles (straight line distance) south-southeast. The pilot encountered 50-knot headwinds and did not stop for fuel en-route to his destination. During his approach to runway 19 at Bremerton, the engine coughed and subsequently died. The pilot executed a forced landing on a state highway about one mile north of the destination airport. During the rollout, the aircraft's right wing impacted a road sign. Upper air winds recorded for western Washington at the time of his departure were 48 knots from 160 degrees true at approximately 2,080 feet above sea level. An FAA inspector interviewed the pilot following the accident during which the pilot reported that he '...radioed the low fuel emergency...' and then '...ran out of fuel and had to make an emergency landing....'
Probable cause
The pilot's decision not to deviate to an alternate airport for fuel after encountering strong headwinds, resulting in fuel exhaustion. Factors contributing to the accident were the unfavorable winds and the sign impacted during the forced landing rollout.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA01LA010
- Event ID
- 20001212X22257
- Case number
- SEA01LA010
- 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 2000-10-28.
- API snapshot SHA-256: d038a4a5f9b593c3a161e27ab221abce57046034ae3982089bf209b72925e9fc; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:21:22.886Z.