CHI07CA190 · Cessna 150L
Airgo Cessna 150L · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Centralia Municipal Airport (ENL) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI07CA190
- 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 150L
- 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
- N11419
- Operator
- Airgo
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Centralia Municipal Airport (ENL), Centralia, ILTo not recorded
- 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
- Flight instructor(on ground) › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
- Fluid, fuel › Exhaustion
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 was substantially damaged during a forced landing following a loss of engine power during cruise. The student pilot stated that she had been practicing maneuvers during a local solo flight for approximately two hours and decided to return to the airport to land. While she was returning to the airport, she became disoriented and "lost [her] way." She stated that she was looking for any airport to land at, "because the visibility was deteriorating." The student pilot reported that the airplane was "getting low on fuel," and the engine "suddenly" shut off and started again. The student pilot decided to find suitable off airport terrain to land. She reported that she landed on a "grass strip" which was the only place that she could find to land, and the airplane subsequently struck a tree and the nose gear collapsed. The pilot stated in her accident report that there was 11.5 gallons of fuel on board at the last takeoff. Examination of the airplane after the accident noted that about 15 total ounces of fuel were drained from the fuel strainer on the firewall, the right fuel tank, and the left fuel tank.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion which resulted in a forced landing. Additional causes were the certified flight instructor's inadequate preflight supervision. Factors contributing to the accident were the disorientation encountered by the pilot, the deteriorating visibility, and the tree encountered on landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI07CA190
- Event ID
- 20070827X01245
- Case number
- CHI07CA190
- 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: 4c4f24e52a4fafe253b6b6fc3424207cc79542b0c4e5dc56525d60bedd6ea671; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:42:50.992Z.