CHI08CA275 · Cessna 150H
Cessna 150H · Accident: fuel starvation en route
From Jensen Field (6MI1) to James Clements Municipal Airport (K3CM)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI08CA275
- 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 150H
- 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
- N23461
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Jensen Field (6MI1), Millington, MITo James Clements Municipal Airport (K3CM), Bay City, MI
- 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 · descent
- 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 starvation
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that the engine "stumbled and quit" about 3 miles from the destination airport. He was able to momentarily restart the engine before the engine lost complete power. The pilot performed a forced landing into a cornfield and the nose gear collapsed when it encountered rough terrain. A post accident inspection did not reveal any anomalies consistent with a loss of engine power. The left and right fuel tanks contained approximately 3.9 gallons and 2.6 gallons, respectively. The temperature and dew point in the vicinity of the accident site were 24 degrees and 14 degrees Celsius, respectively. Data indicated the possibility of moderate carburetor icing at cruise power and serious icing at descent power under those conditions. The pilot reported that his most recent flight review and FAA medical examination were completed in October 2003 and April 2004, respectively. The airplane's most recent annual inspection was completed during October 2005.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power during descent due to carburetor icing. Contributing to the accident was the collapse of the nose landing gear due to rough terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI08CA275
- Event ID
- 20081002X95959
- Case number
- CHI08CA275
- 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. 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: 6f1c54a8c879879ca7aba4972cbddf29310f649fedd0ebdfe3d070b45933a73e; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:16:20.724Z.