CHI04LA057 · Cessna 150L
Cessna 150L · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Middletown Regional Airport (MWO) to Madison Municipal Airport (IMS)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI04LA057
- 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
- N17254
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Middletown Regional Airport (MWO), Middletown, OHTo Madison Municipal Airport (IMS), Madison, IN
- 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; 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
- Flight instructor(on ground) › Supervision, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Became lost/disoriented
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 collided with trees during a forced landing due to fuel exhaustion. The accident occurred during the student's first solo cross country flight. The flight was planned from the Madison Municipal Airport (IMS), Madison, Indiana, to the Hook Municipal Airport (MWO), Middletown, Ohio, with a return leg to IMS. The student reported that during the first leg he overflew MWO and landed at the Green-County-Jackson Regional Airport (I19), in Dayton, Ohio. I19 is approximately 21 nautical miles past MWO. After receiving directions, he departed I19 for MWO where he landed and had his logbook signed. The student then departed for IMS. The student stated that while en route it became dark. The student over shot IMS by about 48 nautical miles. The student stated he did not know where he was until he saw a water tower with an unfamiliar town name on it. The student reported the engine then quit due to fuel exhaustion. He stalled the airplane just above treetops in a wooded area during the forced landing. The airplane settled through the trees coming to rest inverted. The student pilot had a total of 30 hours of flight time, and no night flight time had been logged in his logbook. A review of the student's navigational logs for the flights showed they were not complete or accurate.
Probable cause
The student pilot become lost during the cross country flight and the instructor's inadequate supervision of both the flight and preflight planning. This led to the in-flight loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion, a forced landing, and impact with trees. Factors contributing to the accident were poor preflight planning, fuel exhaustion, inadequate training, night conditions, and the student's lack of cross country and night experience.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI04LA057
- Event ID
- 20040121X00081
- Case number
- CHI04LA057
- 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 2004-01-17.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 63a03e2f2c3d88f3aab68cfc332bac732d5c0b69ed4125578fc5afa9e76ebdf6; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:17:57.936Z.