WPR13LA106 · Cessna 152
KS Aviation Cessna 152 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) on approach
From Castle Airport (MER) to Castle Airport (MER)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR13LA106
- 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
- N68757
- Operator
- KS Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Castle Airport (MER), Atwater, CATo Castle Airport (MER), Atwater, CA
- 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
- 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
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Upon arrival at the airport for the solo local flight, the student pilot performed a preflight inspection, during which he noted that the airplane had 12 gallons of fuel; he stated that the flight was expected to be 1.3 hours long. During the flight, the student became lost while attempting to return to his home airport. The student contacted air traffic control for assistance and was provided position reports back to the airport but was still unable to identify the airport until he was within about 10 miles of it. About this time, which was 2 hours into the flight, the engine began to run roughly and, shortly after, it lost power. The student's attempts to restart the engine were unsuccessful, so he configured the airplane at the best glide speed and conducted an off-airport landing. During the landing roll, the airplane impacted a small rise in the ground and then came to rest inverted.
During recovery of the airplane, it was noted that the fuel tanks had not been compromised, and about 1 gallon of fuel was recovered from both of the fuel tanks. According to the Pilot's Operating Handbook, the airplane had a total usable fuel capacity of 24.5 gallons, 1.5 gallons of which were unusable; with full fuel, the airplane could have flown for about 3.4 hours. Based on the evidence, it is likely that the engine lost power due to fuel exhaustion because the airplane did not have sufficient fuel on board for the extended flight, which resulted from the student's inadequate flight planning.
Probable cause
The student pilot's inadequate flight planning, which resulted in his getting lost and not being able to return to the airport before the fuel was exhausted and the engine lost power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR13LA106
- Event ID
- 20130129X14545
- Case number
- WPR13LA106
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2013-01-27.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 468f378e23809fd926f7b065bbd016162075c9e763567d475c0b92f9a933cb26; retrieved 2026-09-15T20:51:25.101Z.