MIA89LA171 · Cessna 150
Cessna 150 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Poplarville Pearl River County Airport (PCU) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA89LA171
- 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 150
- 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
- N8782G
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Poplarville Pearl River County Airport (PCU)To not recorded
- 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; Wire, transmission
- 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 › Aircraft preflight, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Fuel consumption calculations, inaccurate
- Pilot in command › Fuel supply, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Visual lookout, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PLT WAS RTRNG FM THE 3RD TRIP TO THE LOCAL AREA WHEN THE ENG LOST PWR. HE BEGAN A FORCED LANDING ON A STREET, BUT DRG THE APCH, THE ACFT STRUCK & BECAME SUSPENDED IN PWR LINES THAT CROSSED THE STREET. THE PLT SAID THAT BY THE TIME HE SAW THE PWR LINES, HE WAS UNABLE TO AVOID THEM. HE ESTIMATED THE COMBINED FLT LASTED 8/10 OF AN HR. HE CHECKED THE FUEL BEFORE FLYING & ESTIMATED A FUEL SUPPLY OF 1-1/2 HRS. AFTER THE ACCIDENT, NO USABLE FUEL WAS FOUND IN THE ACFT. THE PLT HAD STARTED THE FLT AT 1800 CDT. AFTER RETURNING FROM A SHORT TRIP IN THE LOCAL AREA, HE FLEW BACK IN THE LOCAL AREA TWO MORE TIMES. THE COMBINED FLT ENDED AT 1930 CDT.
Probable cause
INADEQUATE PREFLIGHT BY THE PILOT AND HIS MISCALCULATION OF FUEL, WHICH RESULTED IN FUEL STARVATION FROM LACK OF FUEL; AND THE PILOT'S FAILURE TO SEE-AND-AVOID THE POWER LINES DURING THE FORCED LANDING. THE POWER LINES WERE A CONTRIBUTING FACTOR.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA89LA171
- Event ID
- 20001213X28619
- Case number
- MIA89LA171
- 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 1989-06-04.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 7eda41dde9e90ffe3127118eba1e47a8e9eef8ae5c5890636ec69ee743e3d75f; retrieved 2026-09-22T00:11:59.003Z.