DFW08LA046 · Cessna 152
Cessna 152 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Hicks Air Field (T67) to Fort Worth, TX
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW08LA046
- 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
- N49962
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hicks Air Field (T67), Fort Worth, TXTo Fort Worth, TX
- 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
- 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
- Fluid, fuel › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command › Refueling, not performed
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot reported that prior to departing his home airport on a cross-country flight, the airplane's fuel tanks were full. During the cross-country flight, the pilot thought the engine started to make a "weird sound", and he elected to land at a nearby airport, where he did an engine run-up and magneto check. No problems were observed, and he continued his flight. During the flight back to his home airport, the engine lost power, and the pilot made a forced landing in a vacant field. The airplane's fuel strainer was removed on site, and no fuel was found. The Hobbs meter recorded the flight's duration as 3.2 hours. During the airplane's recovery, no fuel was observed in the wing's fuel tanks. The engine was examined on January 16, 2008. The sparkplugs were in new condition, and had light gray deposits. The magnetos produced spark at each terminal, and were timed to the engine. A thumb compression test was preformed, and continuity through the engine was confirmed. An external inspection of the engine also failed to find any mechanical problems.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power during cruise flight due to the pilot's failure to refuel the airplane prior to fuel exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW08LA046
- Event ID
- 20071228X02006
- Case number
- DFW08LA046
- 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: ec7ee77ac9fdeb24cd77f998aeb2a062272c67195e6e465b326b02b21d4c73c3; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:13:40.463Z.