ATL05CA045 · Cessna 152
Cessna 152 · Accident: loss of engine power on approach
From Smyrna Airport (KMQY) to Nashville International Airport (KBNA)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL05CA045
- 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 152
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 152
- 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
- N24218
- Operator
- John Gibi
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Smyrna Airport (KMQY), Smyrna, TNTo Nashville International Airport (KBNA), Nashville, TN
- 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
- Approach
- 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
- 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 starvation
- 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 › Starvation
- Fuel system › Blocked(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 instructional flight was approximately three miles south of the destination airport at 1600 feet when it was cleared to land on runway 2R. The engine began to lose power and then surged back up. The engine seemed to recover, then the power dropped again. The student pilot applied carburetor heat. The flight instructor took control of the airplane. He checked the carburetor heat and mixture, then pumped the throttle several times. The flight instructor pushed the carburetor heat in the off position and the engine's condition got worse. The engine continued to quit and then surge back up to full power. The flight instructor informed air traffic control that he was losing power and could not hold altitude. The airplane was approximately 1200 feet and the flight instructor knew they would not make it to the runway. The flight instructor selected a bare pasture on a short hilltop for the emergency landing. The instructor brought the airplane in over trees at the south end of the pasture with no power and full flaps. The airplane touched down on the pasture, but the instructor could not stop it before the crest of the hill. The airplane went over the crest and struck a tree with the right wing, spun around 180-degress, collided into more trees and then came to rest. Examination of the airplane revealed the engine mounts broken, nose gear collapsed, both wings damaged and the empennage bent approximately 45-degrees to the left. Further examination of the engine revealed 18 gallons of fuel in the fuel tanks and very little fuel in the fuel lines or the carburetor. There was also no water found in the fuel lines or carburetor bowl. There were no anomalies found during the examination of the engine. At the time of the accident, the temperature was minus 4-degrees Celsius and the dewpoint was minus 16-degrees Celsius.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to fuel starvation as a result of fuel system blockage.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL05CA045
- Event ID
- 20050224X00229
- Case number
- ATL05CA045
- 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: 9a328ca9e2ca17cc5c04eebb4a326b2e2b8365e54412891b57cc067b6d49162d; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:05:02.456Z.