CHI03LA245 · Cessna 150L
Cessna 150L · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Carlisle Municipal Airport (4M3) to Pine Bluff Regional Airport, Grider Field (PBF)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI03LA245
- 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
- N6791G
- Operator
- Nathan Carraway
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Carlisle Municipal Airport (4M3), Carlisle, ARTo Pine Bluff Regional Airport, Grider Field (PBF), Pine Bluff, AR
- 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
- 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
- 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 › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
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 nosed over in a soybean field during a forced landing due to fuel exhaustion while on a cross country flight. The pilot made one quick en route stop and decided to make his second stop to refuel and check the weather. The airport where he landed had run out of fuel. The pilot was informed of another nearby airport that had just installed a new fuel pump. Upon reaching that airport, the only pump he could locate contained diesel fuel. The pilot then departed for another airport where he knew fuel was available. A loss of engine power occurred when he was approximately 5 miles away from the airport. The pilot reported the right fuel tank quantity indicator was showing one-quarter of a tank and the left fuel tank quantity indicator was bouncing between one-quarter tank and empty. The pilot reported that due to nearby obstructions, he elected to land on a small dirt road in a soybean field. He stated he lowered the flaps during the landing approach, but they did not extend all the way. He stated there were trees and a plow at the end of the road. The pilot stated that as the airplane touched down, he heard the flap motor running. The pilot reported, "As the trees ahead became closer I could sense that I had too much speed to stop in what I thought might be a safe distance from the trees and knew I had to turn, at the last moment and go into the soybean rows to dissipate the forward speed." He reported that once in the field, the airspeed decreased and the airplane nosed over. The pilot reported he flew a Hobbs time of 3.7 hours during the trip.
Probable cause
Inadequate preflight planning which resulted in fuel exhaustion during the cross country flight. A factor associated with the accident was the rough terrain encountered during the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI03LA245
- Event ID
- 20030808X01288
- Case number
- CHI03LA245
- 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: 91a17fbd06f54e27c6585168810c3096d6905fb666bf6463aadd57873852d73e; retrieved 2026-09-22T08:50:30.221Z.