ATL83FA045 · Cessna 150M
Fort Meade Flying Club Cessna 150M · Accident: partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Fort Meade, MD to Fort Meade, MD
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL83FA045
- 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
- 0
- 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
- N2806V
- Operator
- Fort Meade Flying Club
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fort Meade, MDTo Fort Meade, MD
- 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
- Partial 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 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
- Engine assembly, ring › Failure, total
- Fluid, fuel › Water
- Pilot in command › Emergency procedure, improper
- Pilot in command › Precautionary landing, performed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
APPROXIMATELY 45 MIN AFTER TAKEOFF, THE ENG STARTED TO RUN ROUGH. THE PLT HEADED TOWARD THE NEAREST ARPT WITH THE ENG STILL RUNNING ROUGH. THE PLT ENTERED DOWNWIND & PROCEEDED TO FOLLOW A NORMAL LANDING PATTERN. AS HE TURNED FINAL, THE ENG QUIT COMPLETELY. THE ACFT HIT TREE TOPS & CAME TO REST IN A SHALLOW CREEK. THE WINGS WERE NOT IN THE WATER. PRIOR TOREMOVING THE ACFT, APPROXIMATELY 1/2 TO 1 OZ OF WATER WAS DRAINED FROM EACH WING. ENG EXAMINATION REVEALED THAT THE TOP PISTON RING FROM CYLINDERS 2 & 4 WERE BROKEN. THE PLT HAD RECEIVED HIS PRIVATE CERTIFICATE 7/82. HE STATED THAT HE HAD NOT PRACTICED A PRECAUTIONARY APPROACH SINCE HIS STUDENT DAYS, & EVEN THOSE WERE DONE TO A MINIMUM ALTITUDE OF SEVERAL HUNDRED FEET. HE ALSO STATED THAT HE HAD NOT BEEN INSTRUCTED ON PRECAUTIONARY APPROACH PROCEDURES WITH ROUGH RUNNING ENGINES OR WITH PARTIAL POWER LOSS.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL83FA045
- Event ID
- 20020917X04306
- Case number
- ATL83FA045
- 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: d9127a5f664c69a8b8a6ac173313651e80b4d8fbc7422833d1a7dbaf7b955cb3; retrieved 2026-09-21T18:03:38.164Z.