LAX06LA204 · Cessna 152
Cessna 152 · Accident: loss of engine power while maneuvering
From Camarillo International Airport (CMA) to Cunnamulla Airport (CMA)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX06LA204
- 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
- N452WC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Camarillo International Airport (CMA), Camarillo, CATo Cunnamulla Airport (CMA)
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane experienced a loss of engine power and nosed over during a forced landing. The airplane departed with full fuel in both wing tanks. About 45 minutes into the training flight, the certified flight instructor (CFI) began a demonstration of a simulated emergency landing approach. The CFI configured the airplane for the maneuver, while the student read the engine troubleshooting checklist aloud. As part of the maneuver he pushed the throttle control knob forward every altitude loss of 500 feet in an attempt to temporarily increase revolutions per minute (rpm) and "clear" the throttle. The instructor said he had the carburetor heat control in the full on position during the entire maneuver and it ended up in the off position during the ground impact and nose over. While the airplane was about 1,500 feet msl and on the simulated base leg of a traffic pattern, the CFI pushed the throttle forward. The engine did not respond normally and sounded as though it was winding up. After several seconds, the engine quit and the propeller stopped. He attempted to restart the engine by using the engine troubleshooting checklist, but it failed to respond. The airplane touched down in a soft dirt field and nosed over, coming to rest inverted. Personnel that recovered the wreckage shortly after the accident stated that they found 15 to 20 gallons of fuel in the wing tanks and the carburetor heat control in the off position. The outside air and dew point temperatures around of the time of the accident were applied to an industry Carburetor Icing Probability Chart. Both recorded temperatures were within the "serious icing at glide power" portion of the chart. With the engine still mounted in the airframe, investigators ran the engine for several minutes at various rpm settings and noted no anomalies. No evidence was found of pre-accident mechanical malfunctions during the examination of the engine and airframe.
Probable cause
a loss of engine power for undetermined reasons. A factor was the soft terrain encountered during the emergency landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX06LA204
- Event ID
- 20060615X00744
- Case number
- LAX06LA204
- 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: 8799aa7928a9e6ef99ef9a84b045c2826e04cd2c889107979044265d8ce30c81; retrieved 2026-09-21T18:45:03.350Z.