CHI03LA281 · Cessna 150J
Cessna 150J · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Kenosha Regional Airport (ENW) to Prairie Du Chien Municipal Airport (PDC)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI03LA281
- 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 150J
- 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
- N61134
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kenosha Regional Airport (ENW), Kenosha, WITo Prairie Du Chien Municipal Airport (PDC), Prairie du Chien, WI
- 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
- 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 sustained substantial damage about 1245, when the airplane nosed over during a forced landing following an in-flight loss of engine power in cruise flight. The pilot reported that he departed with "16 -18" gallons of fuel on board. The pilot stated, "[I] left Kenosha, Wisconsin, at 10:57 a.m. headed west toward the Mississippi River, Prairie du Chien. Engine quit over wooded/hilly mixed farmland. [I] went through emergency procedures then picked a field to land. [I] did not make it to the desired field." The engine was test run and it produced rated power with its damaged original carburetor. The Cessna 150 manual's cruise performance chart showed a fuel burn of 7.2 gallons per hour at an altitude of 2,500 feet and a 2,750 RPM setting. The local temperature of 29 degrees C and dew point of 12 degrees C were applied to a carburetor icing chart. The intersection of those temperatures was in the "light icing - cruise or descent power" portion of the chart
Probable cause
The loss of engine power in cruise flight due to carburetor icing. A factor was the unsuitable terrain the pilot encountered during his forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI03LA281
- Event ID
- 20030827X01405
- Case number
- CHI03LA281
- 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: 3a516874108c22ec752b8c1d1d108849b6ca319d043618fe2c2a51f8ba06e5c5; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:23:14.037Z.