FTW01LA054 · Cessna 152
Airline Training Academy Cessna 152 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Fort Worth Spinks Airport (FWS) to Tyler Pounds Regional Airport (TYR)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW01LA054
- 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
- Unknown
- 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 152
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 152
- 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
- N5295Q
- Operator
- Airline Training Academy
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fort Worth Spinks Airport (FWS), Fort Worth, TXTo Tyler Pounds Regional Airport (TYR), Tyler, 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 (mechanical failure)
- 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
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, installation, improper
- Throttle/power lever, linkage › Loose part/bolt/nut/clamp/etc
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Approximately five minutes into the cross-county instructional flight, a drop in engine RPM occurred. After a continued steady decrease in the engine RPM, the engine lost total power. Attempts to restart the engine were unsuccessful. During the ensuing forced landing to a field, the nose wheel contacted soft ground, and the airplane nosed over and came to rest inverted. At the time of the accident, the airplane had accumulated 2 hours total time since its last annual inspection. During that annual inspection, the carburetor was removed for additional maintenance. Examination indicated that when the throttle control was actuated from inside the cockpit, the throttle cable and lever did not actuate the throttle shaft and throttle valve. The castellated lock nut securing the throttle lever to the throttle shaft on the carburetor was found not to be saftied, via a required cotter pin. The lock nut had loosened, allowing the throttle cable and lever to move, without movement of the throttle shaft and throttle valve.
Probable cause
maintenance personnel's improper installation of the throttle lever lock nut. A contributory factor was the lack of suitable terrain for the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW01LA054
- Event ID
- 20010131X00374
- Case number
- FTW01LA054
- 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: dc4c0482cfd291b60e3b33d9846c0f5fdd2be32edeb96f5e8f32575a3597594d; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:12:39.185Z.