FTW01FA188 · Cessna 152
Aer Mistral Cessna 152 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Finney Field (T47) to Fort Worth Meacham International Airport (FTW)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW01FA188
- 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
- 1 · 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
- N4755B
- Operator
- Aer Mistral
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Finney Field (T47), Wichita Falls, TXTo Fort Worth Meacham International Airport (FTW), Fort Worth, 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Go-around, not performed
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Wrong runway, selected
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During his second solo cross-country instructional flight, the student pilot reported to the controller that he was lost and low on fuel. The student told the controller that the left fuel gage indicated FULL and the right fuel gage indicated EMPTY. The controller issued the student suggested headings to the nearest airport. The student pilot located the airport and entered the traffic pattern for a landing on runway 17. During the landing roll to the south, the airplane bounced, exited the runway into the grass, and the student performed a go-around. Subsequently, the student landed the airplane to the north on runway 35. Witnesses reported the airplane remained on the runway with the elevators up, flaps retracted, and the propeller turning, before it rolled off the end of the runway at an "estimated speed of 30 mph." Witnesses never saw or heard any indication of braking, nor the addition of power. The airplane struck a vehicle traveling east at 60 mph on an interstate highway located north of the airport. Winds at the time of the accident were from the south at 20 knots. The accident flight time was 2.3 hours. Examination of the airplane's fuel system and its maintenance records revealed that the original left fuel tank transmitter (manufactured by Stewart Warner) was replaced in October 1999 with a new transmitter (manufactured by Rochester). Research revealed that by 1991, the Stewart Warner transmitters and fuel gages were no longer procurable for the airplane, and the Rochester transmitters and gages were to be installed by Service Bulletin (SB)/Service Kit (SK). According to the SB/SK, installation of a Rochester transmitter also requires installation of a Rochester gage. Neither the SB nor the SK had been complied with on the accident airplane. The Rochester gage assembly requires an aluminum back plate. Both fuel gages found in the airplane were Stewart Warner and the back plate was steel. According to the manufacturer representative, "with the Rochester transmitter installed with the Stewart Warner fuel gage, the gage indication would increase as the fuel level in the tank got lower." Physical evidence of fuel leakage from the left tank was found at the tank, the tank fitting, and the inboard wing where the tank was installed. No evidence was found of an in-flight mechanical and or flight/control malfunction that would have rendered the airplane uncontrollable prior to the impact.
Probable cause
The student pilot's improper decision making in that he landed with a tailwind and failed to execute a go-around, which resulted in a runway overrun. Contributing factors were the inaccurate reading of the left fuel gage as a result of improper maintenance by the operator/maintenance personnel, and the tailwind condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW01FA188
- Event ID
- 20010829X01807
- Case number
- FTW01FA188
- 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: 9a07c59a5ee5ad351c09de7adad7499d9027621e074642186fb43a1ed943b0a0; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:24:08.312Z.