LAX01LA192 · Cessna 150H
Cessna 150H · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Whiteman Airport (WHP) to Q68 · Groveland, CA
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX01LA192
- 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 150H
- 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
- N23474
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Whiteman Airport (WHP), Los Angeles, CATo Q68 · Groveland, CA
- 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
- Pilot in command › Refueling, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The engine lost power due to fuel exhaustion after 2.1 hours of flight and 16-miles before reaching the intended destination. The pilot attributed the fuel exhaustion to an interruption that occurred during his (self) fueling of the aircraft, which resulted in the fuel tanks not being totally full on takeoff. As he was filling the left wing fuel tank before takeoff, the pilot was interrupted by another pilot who asked his assistance with operation of the self-fueling equipment. He completed filling the left tank and stopped to assist the other pilot. He returned to his airplane about 10 or 15 minutes later, filled the right-wing tank, and departed. The pilot believed that, during the interruption, a portion of the fuel in the left tank flowed across the aircraft to the right tank and, after he filled the right tank, the left tank was approximately 5 gallons below capacity. He reported making the same trip regularly. Assuming a zero to 5-knot headwind, the trip routinely required 20.3 or 20.4 gallons to complete. The aircraft had been modified to install a larger engine than the original and had a 24-gallon usable fuel capacity. The pilot reported that, on past flights at the same altitude and power setting, the engine consumed 9.17 gallons per hour (2.6 hours endurance).
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to properly refuel the aircraft which resulted in departure with an inadequate quantity of fuel onboard. A factor in the accident was the pilot's inadequate preflight preparation and planning, which failed to provide an adequate fuel reserve for the flight intended.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX01LA192
- Event ID
- 20010530X01030
- Case number
- LAX01LA192
- 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: bc811994ead7ce731a8682b44bedaca6e24b0fbdfd77a05a4f102650c84ad290; retrieved 2026-09-22T11:56:11.593Z.