MIA02LA028 · Cessna 150M
Florida Pilot School Cessna 150M · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) on approach
From Witham Field (SUA) to Witham Field (SUA)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA02LA028
- 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 150M
- 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
- N590AM
- Operator
- Florida Pilot School
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Witham Field (SUA), Stuart, FLTo Witham Field (SUA), Stuart, FL
- 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
- Approach
- 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; Tree(s)
- 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 › Fuel consumption calculations, improper
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot stated that prior to departure she fueled the airplane herself. She then departed Stuart and flew to Melbourne, Florida, and then returned to Stuart. The traffic pattern at Stuart was very busy, so she went to the practice area. She then made contact with the Stuart Control Tower and was cleared to enter right base for runway 7. She was about 8 miles from the airport, at 2,500 feet, and the engine was operating at 2,300 rpm. The engine then quit and she made a forced landing in a orange grove. Postcrash examination of the airplane by FAA inspectors showed the fuel selector was on, the right fuel tank was empty, and the left fuel tank contained 1.5 to 2 gallons of fuel. There was no evidence of fuel leakage from the airplane after the accident or in-flight prior to the accident. The engine tachometer showed the airplane had operated 3.1 flight hours since the pilot took the airplane. After the airplane was recovered, FAA inspectors observed company maintenance personnel attach a fuel supply to the engine and then start and operate the engine with no evidence of mechanical failure or malfunction. The Pilot Operating Handbook for the Cessna 150 shows the airplane has 3.5 gallons of unusable fuel.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper fuel consumption calculations resulting in a loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion and collision with trees during a forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA02LA028
- Event ID
- 20011130X02325
- Case number
- MIA02LA028
- 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: 42af527baa7dd7c51b0cc00ab3dd9f88219eb8bc33de42c46a98f9dcef53f029; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:48:50.530Z.