DEN04FA064 · Cessna 150H
Cessna 150H · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) during initial climb
From 1V5 · Boulder, CO to 1V5 · Boulder, CO
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN04FA064
- 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 150H
- 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
- N105DP
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 1V5 · Boulder, COTo 1V5 · Boulder, CO
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- 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
- Ignition system, magneto › Failure, total
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said he was approximately 300 feet in the air on departure when the engine began to run rough. The pilot said he "put a little mixture in [and] the engine started to run fine for about 5 seconds. Then the engine died." The pilot said the only place he could land was the lake. He said that as he touched down the airplane "skimmed for a few seconds and then it went over on its back." The pilot said he got out through the windscreen, got on top of the bottom of the wing, and then swam to shore. He said the airplane sank nose first about 30 seconds later. Later examination of the airplane showed substantial damage to the left wing. The airplane's engine was examined and showed the left magneto inoperative. An internal examination of the magneto showed corrosion around the points, the P-lead, and the capacitor.
Probable cause
the failed magneto and the lack of suitable terrain (lake) for a forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN04FA064
- Event ID
- 20040419X00482
- Case number
- DEN04FA064
- 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 2004-04-18.
- API snapshot SHA-256: a890938e647b82f2cf07794879fad43f90946a448e6f895a7764e187dd1f692c; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:15:46.327Z.