CEN09FA364 · Cessna 150L
Cessna 150L · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) during takeoff
From KT48 · Terrell, TX to Terrell Municipal Airport (KTRL)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN09FA364
- 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
- 1 · 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 150L
- 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
- N66016
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From KT48 · Terrell, TXTo Terrell Municipal Airport (KTRL), Terrell, TX
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane impacted terrain in a nose low attitude, shortly after departure, and came to rest inverted in an adjacent field. Examination of the airplane and flight controls revealed no anomalies. The signatures on both propeller blades were consistent with little or no power at the time of impact. Corrosion in the carburetor was indicative of the presence of continuous moisture in the carburetor. The local temperature was recorded as 32 degrees Celsius and the dew point was recorded as 22 degrees Celsius; conditions conducive for carburetor icing. The pilot had a history of right shoulder pain intermittently treated with prescription narcotic medication. Toxicology testing suggested that the pilot had used such medication on one or both of the two nights prior to the accident. It is possible that the pilot slept poorly as a result of shoulder pain or medication used to treat that pain, and that his performance during the emergency may have been impaired by resultant fatigue. The pilot did not routinely wear his shoulder harness due to his shoulder pain, and was not wearing it at the time of the accident. His fatal injuries likely resulted from impact with the instrument panel/control yoke, and would have been less probable had the harness been worn. The pilot’s shoulder pain and treatment for it had not been disclosed to the FAA.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain aircraft control following a loss of engine power due to contamination in the carburetor. Contributing the severity of the accident was the pilot’s failure to utilize his shoulder harness.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN09FA364
- Event ID
- 20090617X31933
- Case number
- CEN09FA364
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2009-06-17.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 1c4d684f9f0c54655c61069813eb2b633f5d07606218a8672b54f0e381c0e671; retrieved 2026-09-13T20:17:01.748Z.