SEA07CA161 · Cessna 150J
Cessna 150J · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Kahului International Airport (OGG) to Daniel K. Inouye International Airport (HNL)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA07CA161
- 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 150J
- 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
- N60020
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kahului International Airport (OGG), Kahului, HITo Daniel K. Inouye International Airport (HNL), Honolulu, HI
- 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
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The active duty military pilot rented the airplane, while on leave, for a flight from Honolulu, Hawaii, to the island of Maui, and return. He received a checkout flight (1.2 hours) in the aircraft the day before. The pilot topped off the fuel tanks, which gave him 22.5 gallons useable, before the flight. The flight over was uneventful, but on his return flight, he lost total engine power at 2,000 feet, approximately 10 nautical miles east of his destination. The pilot described the power loss as follows: "The engine smoothly 'rolled back' in RPM to something less than cruise power as if power was simply reduced. It ran smoothly with no inconsistency for approximately one minute, and then completely stopped." He successfully ditched the aircraft into the Pacific Ocean. The two occupants exited the aircraft with an inflatable raft and were rescued. Air traffic control tower records indicate that the pilot's flight time to Maui was 1 hour, 34 minutes, and his return flight from takeoff to ditching was 45 minutes. The airplane's fuel consumption rate should have been between 6 and 7 gallons per hour. The airplane sank in deep water, and was not recovered.
Probable cause
The total loss of engine power for an undetermined reason. A factor was the lack of suitable terrain for a forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA07CA161
- Event ID
- 20070723X00993
- Case number
- SEA07CA161
- 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 2007-06-16.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ea3293942b18f17d4afe4e15ac40c0a09cb820d282494de83f3acbc191646aa1; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:45:07.848Z.