WPR11LA210 · Cessna 150H
Cessna 150H · Accident: loss of engine power (total) on approach
From Martin Field (S95) to Martin Field (S95)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR11LA210
- 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
- 0
- 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 150H
- 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
- N23295
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Martin Field (S95), College Place, WATo Martin Field (S95), College Place, WA
- 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 · VFR pattern base
- 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 (total)
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, while on final approach, the engine rpm dropped and that the engine then lost power. He advanced the throttle, pushed in the carburetor heat control, and attempted to restart the engine, but engine power was not restored. He subsequently performed a forced landing to a road. During the landing, the airplane's right wing tip struck a sign and a mailbox, which resulted in substantial damage to the right wing spar. After the forced landing, the pilot was able to restart the engine, and he then taxied the airplane back to the airport. The pilot reported no known mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane, and a postaccident examination of the carburetor found no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. Atmospheric conditions at the time of the accident were conducive to the formation of serious carburetor icing at glide power. It is likely that the pilot's delayed use of carburetor heat resulted in the total loss of engine power due to the accumulation of carburetor icing.
Probable cause
The pilot’s delayed use of carburetor heat while operating the airplane in atmospheric conditions conducive to carburetor icing, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to carburetor icing during final approach.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR11LA210
- Event ID
- 20110425X95343
- Case number
- WPR11LA210
- 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: 0fa4c79d283009f2cd9ebc6830f1f5ed59d9262d27b9a0a3a5c4d5fe36437cea; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:06:03.162Z.