ATL07CA070 · Cessna 152
Cessna 152 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Eagle's Nest Airport (W13) to Liberty County Airport (2J2)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL07CA070
- 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
- N89193
- Operator
- Steven E. Carter · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Eagle's Nest Airport (W13), Waynesboro, VATo Liberty County Airport (2J2), Hinesville, GA
- 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
- 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, improper
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Prior to departing on a cross country flight, the pilot stated that he fueled the airplane with approximately 15 gallons of automotive gas. He stated that he mixed the automotive gas with the remainder of his Avgas 100LL in accordance with STC SA 2613CE. Approximately 10 miles from his destination airport 2J2, at 1,500 feet, the engine began to "cut in and out, and then stopped". He made an emergency "MAYDAY" call to Savannah Control Tower controllers, and made an emergency landing in a field. During the forced landing the airplane nosed over inverted. Examination by an FAA inspector revealed that the nose wheel was collapsed aft and the firewall was buckled. Further examination revealed the left wing was bent upward. Examination of the fuel tanks revealed that they were not breached, and void of fuel. Both fuel caps were tightly sealed in the locked position. The fuel system lines were further examined and revealed they were also void of fuel.
Probable cause
The pilots improper preflight planning with resulted in a loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL07CA070
- Event ID
- 20070524X00634
- Case number
- ATL07CA070
- 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: 560656d21752acbb6ac721b070fa1aabdcbed4ceed563a5e12103e7fa3e72b57; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:55:54.582Z.