ERA09LA208 · Cessna 150E
Cessna 150E · Accident: fuel exhaustion on approach
From Natchez–Adams County Airport / Hardy-Anders Field (HEZ) to Columbia-Marion County Airport (0R0)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA09LA208
- 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 150E
- 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
- N4057U
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Natchez–Adams County Airport / Hardy-Anders Field (HEZ), Natchez, MSTo Columbia-Marion County Airport (0R0), Columbia, MS
- 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
- Approach
- 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 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
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot flew a cross-country flight, 2 hours in duration, making stops at 2 airports. He then added 10 gallons of fuel to the airplane and observed that the quantity of fuel in the tanks was 1 ½ inches from the top of the fuel tank. The pilot flew approximately one hour, dropped off a passenger, and then departed for the return flight to his home airport. He did not refuel, or look in the fuel tanks to confirm the fuel quantity before departure. The pilot reported he relied mostly on his fuel gauges, which indicated half-full and three-quarters full, to confirm that he had adequate fuel for the flight. After flying for about one hour, while on final approach to the home airport, the airplane's engine lost power and the pilot performed a forced landing. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that the right fuel tank was empty and the left fuel tank contained only "a trace of fuel." Less than a pint of fuel was drained from the gascolator. No mechanical failures were identified by the Federal Aviation Administration, nor were any reported by the pilot. The pilot reported he conducted the flights with the mixture control in the full rich position. The Pilot's Operating Handbook for the aircraft instructs the pilot to lean the fuel mixture for better fuel economy while in cruise flight.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power in flight due to fuel exhaustion as a result of the pilot's inadequate preflight and in-flight fuel planning.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA09LA208
- Event ID
- 20090324X90536
- Case number
- ERA09LA208
- 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: 72a920164bda70c175f40da616900ba63e75e3ec4728b8e7fa4185805295e890; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:52:21.201Z.