CEN13LA354 · Cessna 152
Alpha Tango Flying Service Cessna 152 · Accident: fuel contamination during initial climb
From Dimmit County Airport (KCZT) to San Antonio International Airport (KSAT)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN13LA354
- 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
- N49108
- Operator
- Alpha Tango Flying Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dimmit County Airport (KCZT), Carrizo Springs, TXTo San Antonio International Airport (KSAT), San Antonio, TX
- 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
- Fuel contamination
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that after an initial preflight of the airplane, he had the fuel tanks topped off with aviation fuel. He then completed another preflight inspection that included straining the fuel and rechecking the engine oil. The pilot stated that there were no anomalies with engine operation during his before-takeoff engine run-up or during takeoff; however, during the initial climb, when the airplane was about 300 feet above the ground, the engine experienced a total loss of power. The pilot was unable to restore engine power as he maneuvered the airplane to a nearby dirt road for an off-airport landing. The airplane impacted terrain after the right wing collided with tree branches during the forced landing.
A postaccident examination revealed a significant amount of water contamination in the airplane’s fuel system. The airport’s fuel service truck was checked for water contamination; however, no water contamination was present in samples obtained after the accident. A review of available rainfall data indicated that 5 to 7 inches of rain had fallen since the airplane had last been flown. The loss of engine power was likely due to water contamination of the fuel system. The amount of water contamination that was detected in the fuel system after the accident should have been identified by the pilot during a normal preflight inspection. The engine examination did not reveal any preimpact anomalies that would have prevented normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to identify the water contamination of the fuel system during his preflight inspection, which resulted in a total loss of engine power during the airplane’s initial climb.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN13LA354
- Event ID
- 20130618X52823
- Case number
- CEN13LA354
- 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: 4d058c266f96c280436a6599f01960172c18d497cdb29405a35b984bce5cee29; retrieved 2026-09-15T21:55:57.592Z.