NYC06LA163 · Cessna 150H
Cessna 150H · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Sullivan County International Airport (MSV) to Bay Bridge Airport (W29)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC06LA163
- 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 150H
- 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
- N6970S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sullivan County International Airport (MSV), Monticello, NYTo Bay Bridge Airport (W29), Stevensville, 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
- 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; Tree(s)
- 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 › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command › Fuel consumption calculations, misjudged
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 refueled the airplane prior to a flight to pick up his daughter. At the intermediate stop, the pilot did not refuel the airplane, but did show his daughter how much fuel was onboard and how much fuel was needed for the return trip. During that trip, while in cruise flight, the engine lost power, and the pilot attempted a nighttime forced landing to a field, but the airplane hit trees instead. Subsequent examinations of the airplane revealed no evidence of preimpact mechanical anomaly or fuel leak. The pilot's daughter indicated to local authorities that the airplane had been low on fuel, and at the scene, about 1.5 gallons were found onboard. The owner's manual stated that 3.5 gallons of fuel were unusable. There were a number of airports along the approximate route of flight where the pilot could have purchased fuel.
Probable cause
The pilot's misjudged fuel calculations, which resulted in fuel exhaustion and subsequent loss of engine power. A factor was the nighttime lighting conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC06LA163
- Event ID
- 20060925X01396
- Case number
- NYC06LA163
- 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 2006-06-30.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 201a1204e0149178bd8d5cb0a23d8355fabd6f1a57b742d72aeb17e0c4a79e79; retrieved 2026-09-21T08:56:18.098Z.