DEN89LA223 · Cessna 150L
Cessna 150L · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Lea County-Zip Franklin Memorial Airport (E06) to Cavern City Air Terminal (CNM)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN89LA223
- 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 150L
- 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
- N6633G
- Operator
- Stell, Dennis K. · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lea County-Zip Franklin Memorial Airport (E06), Lovington, NMTo Cavern City Air Terminal (CNM), Carlsbad, NM
- 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
- Pilot in command › Refueling, not performed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PILOT REPORTED THAT HE DEPARTED AMARILLO, TX, WITH WHAT HE ESTIMATED AS 15 GALLONS OF FUEL, FOR A FINAL DESTINATION OF MARFA, TX. HE LANDED, BUT WAS UNABLE TO REFUEL, AT BOTH MORTON, TX AND LOVINGTON, NM. HE SAID 'THEN I FIGURED THE DISTANCE TO CARLSBAD, NM, AND DECIDED I COULD MAKE IT....' THE PILOT SAID THAT 7 MILES NORTHEAST OF CARLSBAD, THE ENGINE LOST POWER AND HE MADE A FORCED LANDING ON A ROAD. DURING LANDING ROLL, THE PLANE STRUCK TREES, DEPARTED THE ROAD, AND ENTERED A DITCH. A POSTACCIDENT INVESTIGATION REVEALED NO FUEL IN GASCOLATOR, FUEL PUMP OR CARBURETOR, AND ONLY A TRACE OF FUEL WAS FOUND IN THE WING TANKS.
Probable cause
THE PILOT FAILED TO REFUEL THE AIRPLANE IN A TIMELY MANNER WHICH RESULTED IN FUEL EXHAUSTION.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN89LA223
- Event ID
- 20001213X29357
- Case number
- DEN89LA223
- 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: 7364b2885e16964a95239011aed5569c2ff0bf4da368717ce905a46b61ede524; retrieved 2026-09-22T00:02:00.971Z.