CHI01LA170 · Cessna 150L
Cessna 150L · Accident: loss of engine power during initial climb
From Munster, IN to Lansing Municipal Airport (IGQ)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI01LA170
- 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 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
- N6557G
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Munster, INTo Lansing Municipal Airport (IGQ), Lansing, IL
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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 contamination
- 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 › Contamination, water
- Pilot in command › Altitude, low
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On the previous flight, the airplane experienced a loss of engine power during cruise flight. The airplane was successfully forced landed in the soybean field by another pilot. The owner/accident pilot said that when he arrived at the field, he and one of his line service employees removed the airplane's cowling and "examined [the] control cables, etc." They checked the fuel at both of the fuel tank drains and the main sump. They also did a visual check of the fuel in the tanks. They started the engine with the cowling off and did an engine run up. The owner/pilot shut the engine down, replaced the cowling, restarted the engine, and taxied the airplane to the east edge of the field. The owner/pilot said, "I proceeded to do another run up with mags checking good. I lowered flaps to 20 degrees and started a take off roll to the west." He said that the ground roll and climb out seemed normal and the engine sounded okay. The owner/pilot said that at about 50 to 75 feet above the ground the engine quit. "I pumped the throttle a few times to no avail. With an 8 foot [high] cyclone fence ahead of me, I decided to turn 90 degrees to the left." The owner/pilot said that about the same time the airplane was "making ground contact nose heavy and flipped over on the aircraft's back." The owner/pilot said that he suspected water contamination. He said that they had this problem before with this airplane. The airplane had been tied outside for a couple of weeks, and that they had experienced some heavy rain during that time. An examination of the airplane revealed water in the fuel.
Probable cause
Engine failure during takeoff due to water contaminating the fuel, the pilot's inadequate preflight planning/preparation, and the low altitude. Factors relating to this accident were the attempted emergency landing after takeoff and the fence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI01LA170
- Event ID
- 20010620X01221
- Case number
- CHI01LA170
- 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: c41caed0d7df6c88c77adc28b7d9c46538be49957c555594bffd42b5f21316ca; retrieved 2026-09-22T11:51:39.945Z.