IAD05LA045 · Cessna 152
Cessna 152 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Raleigh-Durham International Airport (RDU) to W32 · Clinton, MD
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD05LA045
- 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
- N64986
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Raleigh-Durham International Airport (RDU), Raleigh/Durham, NCTo W32 · Clinton, MD
- 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
- 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 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
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, 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 pilot departed into instrument meteorological conditions and initially encountered icing at 5,000 feet. He then descended the airplane to 3,000 feet, where about 30 minutes later the engine experienced roughness. After an application of carburetor heat, the engine smoothed and the pilot continued the flight. About 1 hour later, and at an altitude of 4,000 feet, the pilot noted the presence of mist, and that the temperature was slightly above freezing, and activated the pitot heat. Shortly thereafter the engine suddenly "quit," and the pilot performed a forced landing to a highway. During the landing rollout, both wings struck signs next to the highway and the airplane then veered off the highway and into a median. Following the accident, FAA inspectors asked the pilot to start the engine, and it ran for 30 seconds at idle rpm, until the pilot shut it down. During the recovery process, about 2 gallons of fuel were drained from the fuel tanks, and no indications could be found that either fuel tank had been compromised during the accident. The pilot stated that prior to the accident flight, he determined the amount of fuel onboard the airplane by estimating the fuel consumed on the previous flight.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to the pilot's inadequate preflight planning which resulted in fuel exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD05LA045
- Event ID
- 20050323X00352
- Case number
- IAD05LA045
- 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: bf12c1a9ea8df692324a6c2109a0a8a7fa9ba91286af99125dade61629107607; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:10:55.151Z.