LAX08LA212 · Cessna 150F
Cessna 150F · Accident: fuel contamination during initial climb
From Kalispell City Airport (S27) to Kalispell City Airport (S27)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX08LA212
- 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 150F
- 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
- N8647G
- Operator
- Jamie Whealon
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kalispell City Airport (S27), Kalispell, MTTo Kalispell City Airport (S27), Kalispell, MT
- 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
- Defining eventThe 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
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The certified flight instructor (CFI) and student took off for an instructional flight during which a series of touch-and-go landings were performed. During initial climb out for the 13th takeoff, the engine sputtered, regained power, and then lost power on the crosswind leg. The CFI took the controls and attempted a forced landing. The airplane impacted the uneven ground, collided into a fence, and was destroyed by fire. During the subsequent examination of the airframe and engine, no evidence of any preimpact mechanical malfunction was found. The engine's carburetor assembly was examined by the Safety Board Materials Laboratory. Granular material was found on the walls of the carburetor's throat and in the interior of the inlet duct. The idle jet was substantially blocked and the main jet was partially obstructed. Similar fine granular material and clumps of mixed fine and coarser granular material were also found inside the carburetor jets. Because the granular sand-like material was found in both the fuel and air sides of the carburetor, it is evident that the foreign substance entered the carburetor during flight. The airplane had a history of infrequent usage. During the 10-month period from April 2007 to February 2008, the airplane had been operated for only 8.8 hours.
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power during initial climb due to fuel system contamination by a foreign substance. Contributing to the accident was the uneven terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX08LA212
- Event ID
- 20080714X01042
- Case number
- LAX08LA212
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: 8a87d7f67f2ecec595d1ab980fac84ce38153423921a066e804ead5049912990; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:54:25.345Z.