CEN12CA599 · Cessna 152
Cessna 152 · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) on approach
From Poplar Grove Airport (C77) to Chicago Rockford International Airport (RFD)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN12CA599
- 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
- N152BA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Poplar Grove Airport (C77), Poplar Grove, ILTo Chicago Rockford International Airport (RFD), Rockford, IL
- 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 final
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While on a visual approach to the runway during the instructional flight, the engine lost partial power. The flight instructor reported that the engine was operating normally and then the engine rpm abruptly decreased from 2,200 to about 1,300. The carburetor heat was in the OFF position for the approach. The flight instructor's efforts to regain engine power were unsuccessful. Unable to make a landing at the airport, the instructor executed a forced landing to a field. The airplane touched down short of the airport, nosed over, and came to rest inverted. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that the vertical stabilizer and rudder were bent; no mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operation were identified. The engine was test run at various power settings with no anomalies noted. Although a carburetor icing probability chart revealed that the ambient temperature and dew point at the time of the accident favored serious carburetor icing at glide power, the pilot reported that the engine was not at glide power when the power loss occurred. Accordingly, the investigation was not able to identify the reason for the power loss.
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined because postaccident examination of the engine revealed no anomalies.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN12CA599
- Event ID
- 20120904X61553
- Case number
- CEN12CA599
- 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: 5e9b5128b50b4de30f68c541d6821d3720786c61f5b5b306041e8c19bbfff307; retrieved 2026-09-15T19:40:43.222Z.