LAX02LA123 · Cessna 152
Cessna 152 · Accident: loss of engine power during initial climb
From 61B · Boulder City, NV to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX02LA123
- 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 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
- N48908
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 61B · Boulder City, NVTo not recorded
- 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
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane made an off airport forced landing following a loss of engine power immediately after departure. After takeoff, upon reaching 300 to 400 feet above ground level (agl), the engine experienced a rapid loss of power. The pilot maneuvered the airplane in a gliding configuration and, after determining that the airplane was unable to reach airport, opted to perform a forced landing in a dry riverbed. While in the landing flare, the airplane collided with vegetation and came to an abrupt stop after impacting a large bush. A review of the airplane's maintenance records disclosed that the engine had a history of ongoing problems with the idle mixture. In an effort to address those problems, the operator had the carburetor overhauled about a week prior the accident. The mixture discrepancy occurred again following the carburetor overhaul. After the accident, an engine examination revealed that spark plugs from the number one cylinder, as well as the top number two plug, appeared dark and sooty, with the bottom number two plug being oily. In addition, the bottom number three and four plugs were covered in lead deposits. Investigators performed an engine run, where it accelerated up to 1,600 revolutions per minute (rpm) and, despite black smoke emitting from the exhaust stack, ran smoothly; after leaning out the mixture, it accelerated up to 2,100 rpm and the exhaust cleared. A detailed examination of the carburetor revealed no mechanical malfunctions or anomalies other than an excessively low idle fuel flow.
Probable cause
a loss of engine power due to an undetermined malfunction of the carburetor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX02LA123
- Event ID
- 20020410X00490
- Case number
- LAX02LA123
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2002-04-03.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 3ff7827455f8f4e81fa542773482c98d6e706a695c48b6937b5de3959091acde; retrieved 2026-09-22T11:01:58.694Z.