FTW04LA116 · Cessna 150
Cessna 150 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From South Arkansas Regional Airport at Goodwin Field (ELD) to Magnolia Municipal Airport / Ralph C Weiser Field (AGO)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW04LA116
- 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 150
- 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
- N5628E
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From South Arkansas Regional Airport at Goodwin Field (ELD), El Dorado, ARTo Magnolia Municipal Airport / Ralph C Weiser Field (AGO), Magnolia, 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, improper
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The 288-hour pilot was on a cross country flight and landed at an airport to purchase fuel. Upon landing he noticed "that everything was shut down for the day." The pilot talked with a man in the terminal building, who informed him that he would have to wait about an hour for fuel service and he would have to pay a $30.00 "call-out" fee. He elected to fly to another airport about 20 miles away to purchase fuel. Before departing, the pilot performed a preflight inspection for the airplane, which included a visual inspection of both fuel tanks. He grabbed a broom from the back of a fuel truck and "stuck it in the fuel tank to check the level better." The left tank was just under 1/2-full, and the right tank was about 1/4-full. Approximately 10 miles from the airport the engine stopped producing power and the pilot landed in a field. Examination of the airplane revealed both fuel tanks were intact and empty. There was no evidence of a fuel spill or leak, and no mechanical deficiencies were noted. The pilot reported that he had made fuel stops along his route of flight. Examination of fueling records revealed the pilot had purchased 23.16 gallons at one stop a few days before the accident and 21.4 gallons on the day of the accident. The airplane was equipped with two standard fuel tanks, one in each wing. The total fuel capacity was 26 gallons (13 gallons each tank), and the total usable fuel capacity was 22.5 gallons (11.25 gallons each tank). In addition, the pilot told a law enforcement official at the accident site that he had run out of fuel.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper pre-flight planning, which resulted in a loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion. A contributing factor was the lack of suitable terrain for the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW04LA116
- Event ID
- 20040525X00660
- Case number
- FTW04LA116
- 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 2004-04-14.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 76717cd71a81bbe09b23404bac8b7f36a7d4253f7002f9305455249adfb4f6dc; retrieved 2026-09-22T07:44:10.466Z.