FTW04CA239 · Cessna 150L
Kerrville Aviation Cessna 150L · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Cain Airport (T28) to Kerrville / Kerr County Airport at Louis Schreiner Field (ERV)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW04CA239
- 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
- N11418
- Operator
- Kerrville Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cain Airport (T28), Lampasas, TXTo Kerrville / Kerr County Airport at Louis Schreiner Field (ERV), Kerrville, TX
- 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 › In-flight planning/decision, 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 375-hour private pilot, before leaving Kerrville Municipal Airport, asked the line crew to "top off" the fuel tanks. The line crew indicated they had filled both tanks, but the pilot did not visually check the fuel level before departure. On the return flight from Lampasas Airport, while near Mountain Home, Texas and at approximately 2,800 feet above ground level, the engine briefly ran rough and then lost power. The pilot observed that the fuel gages were "one needles width above empty", and attempted to restart the engine. When the engine failed to start, the pilot elected to land in a freshly planted field. The pilot touched down and the initial landing roll were uneventful, but the nose gear subsequently collapsed and the airplane nosed over coming to rest inverted. The fuel system and engine were examined after the wreckage was recovered to a secure location. The engine was successfully run for 30 minutes. No anomalies were found that could have prevented normal engine operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper inflight planning which resulted in a loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion. A factor was the lack of suitable terrain for the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW04CA239
- Event ID
- 20041014X01622
- Case number
- FTW04CA239
- 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: 7a1e0ef079d9a215d44ee978bae319ab37cb4a3e5cf081a29d51b42e03f6450a; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:42:48.760Z.