NYC01LA095 · Cessna 150D
Cessna 150D · Accident: partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Fairmont Municipal Airport Frankman Field (4G7) to Frederick Municipal Airport (FDK)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC01LA095
- 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 150D
- 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
- N974CA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Possible conflict
- From Fairmont Municipal Airport Frankman Field (4G7), Fairmont, WVTo Frederick Municipal Airport (FDK), Frederick, MD
- 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
- Partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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
- Mixture control, cable › Loose
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot purchased the airplane in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and was destined for Woodbine, New Jersey. On the second day of his trip, while in cruise flight over West Virginia, the engine momentarily lost power and then returned to cruise rpm. This intermittent condition continued and the pilot was unable to return the engine to normal operation. He elected to perform a precautionary landing in an open field below him. After main wheel touchdown, the nose wheel touched down, and dug into the soft ground. The airplane nosed over, and came to rest inverted. Examination revealed that the mixture control cable housing had come loose, which allowed it to move toward the idle cut-off position. The engine ran satisfactorily after the mixture control cable housing was properly secured.
Probable cause
a loose mixture control cable housing which resulted in an intermittent running engine, and the pilot's subsequent decision to perform a precautionary landing. A factor was the soft terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC01LA095
- Event ID
- 20010424X00806
- Case number
- NYC01LA095
- 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, coordinates. 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: a9f66952f32b5cc200302fe77b62b635c7402277c299b27bfc2b6159015a42c9; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:59:27.987Z.