WPR15LA090 · Cessna 150E E
Cessna 150E E · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From San Carlos Airport (SQL) to Silver Springs Airport (SPZ)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR15LA090
- 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 150E E
- 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
- N4017U
- Operator
- Brian Vowell
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From San Carlos Airport (SQL), San Carlos, CATo Silver Springs Airport (SPZ), Silver Springs, NV
- Aircraft age
- About 50 years (built 1965)
- 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 (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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, before takeoff for the cross-country flight, the airplane had been topped off with fuel and had a total of 24 gallons onboard. During the descent for landing, the engine lost power. The pilot adjusted the mixture and throttle controls, and the engine regained power. About 10 to 15 minutes later, while continuing the descent, he noted that both fuel gauges indicated about one-quarter of a tank of fuel. Shortly after, the engine again lost power. The pilot's attempts to restart the engine were unsuccessful. The airplane was unable to reach the runway, and the pilot landed the airplane in an open field adjacent to the airport. During the landing roll, the airplane struck the airport perimeter fence and came to rest upright.
Immediately following the accident, no evidence of any fuel leaks was observed. The airplane was left unattended until the following day, at which time, about 2 quarts of fuel was removed from the left wing fuel tank, and about 1 quart of fuel was removed from the right wing fuel tank. No fuel was present within the airframe fuel strainer. Performance calculations indicated that, if proper leaning procedures were used, the flight would have required about 17.5 gallons of fuel and that about 5 gallons of usable fuel should have been remaining after the airplane reached its destination. The investigation was unable to determine why so little fuel remained in the airplane after the accident.
After the airplane was recovered, an alternate fuel source was plumbed to the left wing inlet line. The engine successfully started; due to damage sustained to the propeller, the engine was run at a reduced power setting, and it ran for 5 minutes. The reason for the loss of engine power could not be determined.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined during a postaccident examination of the airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR15LA090
- Event ID
- 20150126X90859
- Case number
- WPR15LA090
- 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. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2015-01-25.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 2ba0f6f1bd886a065fe7c1eaedce5be3f23dc742a00dbd72fb494543df597257; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:03:12.260Z.