WPR10LA168 · Cessna 150F
Cessna 150F · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) en route
From Tillamook Airport (TMK) to Tillamook Airport (TMK)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR10LA168
- 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 150F
- 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
- N7854F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tillamook Airport (TMK), Tillamook, ORTo Tillamook Airport (TMK), Tillamook, OR
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that as he configured the airplane in a level attitude for cruise flight, the engine's rpm began to decrease and he applied carburetor heat with no effect noted. The pilot subsequently turned the airplane back towards the airport to land. As he approached the runway, he had raise the airplane's nose in an effort to avoid an airport perimeter fence. The airplane stalled and impacted soft terrain short of the runway. The airplane came to rest inverted; the aft fuselage and the vertical stabilizer were bent. A postaccident examination of the wreckage revealed no preimpact anomalies with the engine or airframe that would have prevented normal operation. The temperature and dewpoint at the time of the flight were both 45 degrees Fahrenheit. Plotting these temperatures on a carburetor icing chart indicated the conditions were conducive to serious icing at cruise power.
Probable cause
The partial loss of engine power during climb to cruise due to carburetor icing and the pilot's delay in using carburetor heat.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR10LA168
- Event ID
- 20100320X93052
- Case number
- WPR10LA168
- 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: 4da817dac538813c45faa347a7ef6d49cf880b15de5e9e29bf59ba9b410a9be7; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:46:09.682Z.