FTW01LA028 · Cessna 150L
Cessna 150L · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From F61 · Pauls Valley, OK to 5R3 · Lago Vista, TX
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW01LA028
- 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
- N18609
- Operator
- David W. Mcbride · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From F61 · Pauls Valley, OKTo 5R3 · Lago Vista, TX
- 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; Tree(s)
- 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 › Became lost/disoriented
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a night cross-country flight, the private pilot became lost and elected to turn back toward an airport he had over flown. During the pilot's diversion, the engine lost power. The pilot attempted to restart the engine by pumping the throttle. The engine gained a few RPM, but would not restart. The pilot saw what appeared to be a vehicle and attempted to land on a road. During the approach, the airplane struck a tree and came to rest in a tree approximately 6 feet above the ground. According to the aircraft salvage personnel, they removed 1 gallon of fuel from the right fuel tank and approximately 1 cup of fuel from the left fuel tank. The engine was test run under the supervision of an NTSB investigator. The engine was test run for 15 minutes at various power settings.
Probable cause
the loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion after the pilot became lost during cruise flight. A contributing factor was the dark night condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW01LA028
- Event ID
- 20001220X45453
- Case number
- FTW01LA028
- 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 2000-11-27.
- API snapshot SHA-256: f5e832594a3e6cbab856ade42eebca50b29d71af80bf02b77709cbcaee259438; retrieved 2026-09-21T10:18:46.706Z.