ERA10LA475 · Cessna 150
Cessna 150 · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) during initial climb
From Fayette Airport (WV59) to Johnson City Airport (0A4)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10LA475
- 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 150
- 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
- N7922E
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fayette Airport (WV59), Fayetteville, WVTo Johnson City Airport (0A4), Johnson City, TN
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that during the initial climb the airplane engine's rpm gauge indicated 1900 and the airplane would not gain altitude which resulted in a forced landing. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed fuel in the fuel tanks and carburetor system. All cylinders had compression when checked. The right magneto developed sparks to all corresponding plugs. The left magneto produced spark to one plug only. A teardown examination of the left magneto revealed the distributor gear had 12 gear teeth sheared from the disk. Review of the engine's maintenance records showed that the ignition system had several inspections as required by airworthiness directives and service bulletins (SB) throughout its time in service. The distributor gear was required to be replaced with a redesigned gear as outlined in SB658; however, both magnetos had the old-style distributor gear, dating to before 1978. Additionally, the gear tooth separation was noted starting and ending at the magneto timing block location marker. The manufacturer of the magneto warned not to use a gear holding tool during installation, which may cause hidden damage to the distributor gear and subsequent engine failure.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to the failure of the left magneto system’s distributor gear as a result of the improper maintenance of the magnetos by maintenance personnel.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10LA475
- Event ID
- 20100912X42115
- Case number
- ERA10LA475
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- 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: 902bf16ce50c8c9f101f69a8566def2736843a6eda99b2494316c038b5ad2ed6; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:09:50.594Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: destination. Misspelled city name; the Tennessee city is Johnson City.