ERA09LA247 · Cessna 152
Sunrise Aviation Cessna 152 · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) en route
From Cross City Airport (CTY) to Ormond Beach Municipal Airport (OMN)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA09LA247
- 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
- N64988
- Operator
- Sunrise Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cross City Airport (CTY), Cross City, FLTo Ormond Beach Municipal Airport (OMN), Ormond Beach, FL
- 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 · climb to cruise
- 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 (partial)
- 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
While climbing through 3,400 feet mean seal level (msl), the newly certificated private pilot noticed that the engine power decreased by approximately 300 rpm; however, the engine was running smoothly with no abnormal noise. The pilot verified that the engine controls were in the proper position and he then positioned the carburetor heat to "ON." The engine power continued a steady decay to 1,400 rpm as the airplane descended to 1,000 feet msl and the pilot elected to perform a forced landing to a field that he had been circling. During the landing, he overshot his intended touchdown point. The airplane subsequently struck two fence posts and came to rest inverted in the field. Review of fueling records revealed that the airplane had adequate fuel to complete the round trip cross-country flight. The engine crankshaft and carburetor were damaged during impact, which limited the field examination of those components. The cabin heat was noted in the "ON" position and the carburetor heat was in the "OFF" position; however, the carburetor box had been pulled from the airframe during impact. Examination of the wreckage could not identify the reason for the engine power loss. Review of a Federal Aviation Administration Carburetor Icing Chart revealed "Serious icing - glide power" for the reported temperature and dew point conditions.
Probable cause
Loss of engine power for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA09LA247
- Event ID
- 20090416X45406
- Case number
- ERA09LA247
- 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: 7b3fd834ac1ea7e70208a56465081fd42ad5a8d909043392baa4df1257c6f19e; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:56:34.720Z.