CEN09CA121 · Cessna 150M
Cessna 150M · Accident: loss of engine power (total) while maneuvering
From Waverly Municipal Airport (C25) to Waverly Municipal Airport (C25)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN09CA121
- 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 150M
- 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
- N899CB
- Operator
- Kevin E. Brown · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Waverly Municipal Airport (C25), Waverly, IATo Waverly Municipal Airport (C25), Waverly, IA
- 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
- Maneuvering · low-altitude flying
- 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
- Loss of engine power (total)
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The recently certificated private pilot reduced the engine power setting and descended to an altitude of 800 to 1,000 feet above the ground so the passenger could take aerial photographs of a farm house. The pilot stated that he had the power setting pulled back approximately halfway while they were circling and that the engine seized when he attempted to apply full power to gain altitude. The airplane landed hard during the off-airport forced landing on a snow-covered farm field. The airplane sustained firewall damage when the nose gear collapsed following a 75-foot-long landing roll. The pilot stated that he did not use carburetor heat while circling. Postaccident inspection revealed the engine turned freely when rotated by hand and when the ignition was engaged. Examination of the spark plugs revealed they were black in color from soot.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to undetermined reasons. Contributing to the accident was the rough, snow-covered terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN09CA121
- Event ID
- 20090107X21822
- Case number
- CEN09CA121
- 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: c96c0391aedd79cb210f8d813ee7e79a9ed87b938953139173a8503c074345a6; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:40:26.989Z.