LAX06LA265 · Cessna A150M
Cessna A150M · Accident: loss of engine power during initial climb
From Red Bluff Municipal Airport (RBL) to Mineta San Jose International Airport (SJC)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX06LA265
- 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 A150M
- 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
- C-GOBC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Red Bluff Municipal Airport (RBL), Red Bluff, CATo Mineta San Jose International Airport (SJC), San Jose, CA
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Engine assembly, cylinder › Overtemperature
- Engine assembly, valve, exhaust › Seized
- Pilot in command › Mixture, improper use of
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 after takeoff, made a forced landing, touched down on uneven terrain, and came to rest inverted. The pilot was on the fourth leg of a cross-country flight when the engine lost power on the initial climb-out about 200 feet agl. Investigators inspected the engine and found the exhaust valves for two of the cylinders stuck in the open position, with dark combustion deposits in the combustion chambers. Both of the exhaust valves exhibited purple discoloration consistent with thermal overheating damage. All four cylinders exhibited pink discoloration of the head and cooling fins in the vicinity of the exhaust ports, which is consistent with thermal overheating. The pilot reported that the engine had been running rough during the approach phase of the flight prior to the accident. The pilot flew the airplane a total distance of approximately 567 nm on the day of the accident. The previous 19.8 hours of the airplane were flown exclusively by the accident pilot. Just prior to the accident, the engine had undergone a 50-hour inspection, and had had a major overhaul 185 hours ago.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper mixture leaning technique, which lead to thermal damage and seizure of the exhaust valves.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX06LA265
- Event ID
- 20060823X01228
- Case number
- LAX06LA265
- 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: 3f05f2b0d5e29e6caea9dc4116a128869deccd56920a62f028dcff0373d88221; retrieved 2026-09-21T18:42:00.463Z.