SEA07LA126 · Cessna 150G
Cessna 150G · Accident: loss of engine power during initial climb
From Valley View Airport (NV00) to Valley View Airport (NV00)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA07LA126
- 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
- 1 · 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 150G
- 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
- N3121J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Valley View Airport (NV00), Pahrump, NVTo Valley View Airport (NV00)
- 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
- 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 contamination
- 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 › Contamination
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Witnesses reported the airplane departed on runway 18, and approximately 50 feet above the ground, the engine began to sputter. It started to turn left, back towards the airfield, and descend in a left wing low, nose-low attitude to ground impact. The airplane's empennage failed in a scorpion like manner and it came to rest inverted. The most recent 100-hour/annual inspection was performed on April 23, 2007, with a tachometer time of 2,393 hours. The airplane had been flown approximately 7 hours during the last 13 months. No preimpact mechanical engine or airframe anomalies, which might have affected the airplane’s performance, were identified. A decal near the left fuel tank filler port indicated the use of auto-gas was approved, but no associated FAA Major Repair and Alteration form 337 was found in the aircraft paperwork. The right fuel tank was breached and did not contain fuel. The left fuel tank contained yellow colored fuel. The firewall mounted fuel strainer screen was discolored, and the reservoir contained brownish-yellow fuel, which was contaminated with dirt and tested positive for water. The carburetor inlet screen was partially obstructed with dirt, rust, and sand.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power due to fuel contamination followed by the pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control during takeoff. Contributing factors were the pilot's inadequate preflight and an inadequate 100-hour maintenance inspection by other maintenance personnel.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA07LA126
- Event ID
- 20070608X00698
- Case number
- SEA07LA126
- 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: 9809a9e22efdf7d30a5966189b55e65ae621731b756a201f4134924e3818a2e9; retrieved 2026-09-20T16:37:20.182Z.