NYC06LA147 · Cessna 150D
Cessna 150D · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Concord, NC (no airport) to Paoli Municipal Airport (I42)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC06LA147
- 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 150D
- 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
- N4542U
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Concord, NC (no airport)To Paoli Municipal Airport (I42), Paoli, IN
- 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; Wire, static
- 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 › Fuel consumption calculations, 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 Cessna 150D experienced a total loss of engine power during cruise flight, about 3.2 hours after departure. The pilot attempted to perform an emergency landing to a road, but the airplane's right wing struck power lines, and it subsequently impacted the ground. The pilot reported to Federal Aviation Administration inspectors that the engine began to run rough and then stopped operating. A postaccident examination of the airplane and engine revealed about 2 ounces of fuel in the fuel tanks, and less than 1 ounce of fuel in the carburetor and gascolator. For testing purposes, the engine was supplied with 1 pint of new fuel and run at various power settings for approximately 5 minutes, with no abnormalities noted. According to the airplane's Pilot Operating Handbook, its approximate engine operating endurance was 3.9 hours, at altitudes between 2,500 feet and 7,500 feet, with full fuel tanks, a lean fuel mixture setting, and a power setting of 75-percent. The actual fuel load at takeoff could not be obtained, and repeated attempts by the Safety Board to contact the pilot were unsuccessful.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate fuel consumption calculations, which resulted in fuel exhaustion and subsequent loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC06LA147
- Event ID
- 20060807X01108
- Case number
- NYC06LA147
- 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 2006-06-15.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 50b8dac70d2720986d568ce528bde8d41150b62cd36f542b3f49e9f129715840; retrieved 2026-09-22T04:46:10.961Z.