WPR13LA101 · Cessna 150L
Cessna 150L · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) en route
From Bowerman Airport (HQM) to Bremerton National Airport (PWT)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR13LA101
- 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 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
- N18690
- Operator
- Andrew Hansen
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bowerman Airport (HQM), Hoquiam, WATo Bremerton National Airport (PWT), Bremerton, WA
- Aircraft age
- About 41 years (built 1972)
- 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 · 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot reported that while he was on his first solo cross country flight, the weather started to deteriorate. He descended to a lower altitude and as he proceeded towards the nearest airport, he noticed that the vertical speed indicator indicated a descent of 700 feet per minute. The pilot applied full power and the airplane continued to descend. The pilot elected to land on a nearby road. During the descent he ensured that the throttle was at full power, the mixture was full rich, and the fuel selector was on both fuel tanks. While on a base leg, the pilot applied carburetor heat. When he turned final he observed that he was too high; he idled the power and slipped the airplane to lose altitude. During the landing flare the left wing struck a sign; the airplane departed the roadway and came to rest inverted about 20 feet from the roadway. A postaccident examination and run of the engine revealed no mechanical failures or malfunctions that would have precluded normal operation. Weather at the time of the accident reported a temperature of 4 degrees C, and a dewpoint of 4 degrees C. When graphed on the Carburetor Icing Probability Chart provided by the Federal Aviation Administration, these weather conditions were conducive for serious icing at cruise power. It is likely that the pilot's delayed action in applying carburetor heat resulted in a partial loss of engine power due to carburetor icing.
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power after a descent to a lower altitude due to the student pilot's delayed action in applying carburetor heat while operating in conditions conducive to carburetor icing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR13LA101
- Event ID
- 20130124X12107
- Case number
- WPR13LA101
- 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: 1515146237217c38a1d94ccd3d2f4e949ecb72b38766f4ff12bfc123d9dd4b99; retrieved 2026-09-15T20:48:50.471Z.