ERA15LA145 · Cessna 152
Florida Flight Training Center Cessna 152 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) while maneuvering
From Venice Municipal Airport (VNC) to Venice Municipal Airport (VNC)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA15LA145
- 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
- N498TC
- Operator
- Florida Flight Training Center
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Venice Municipal Airport (VNC), Venice, FLTo Venice Municipal Airport (VNC), Venice, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 36 years (built 1979)
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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 flight instructor reported that he and the student pilot departed on a local training flight. After completing maneuvers at 2,000 ft, the flight instructor initiated a simulated engine failure and proceeded to demonstrate the forced landing procedure to the student. He selected a field as the forced landing location and applied carburetor heat. After turning onto final approach for the field at an altitude of about 500 ft, the flight instructor discontinued the simulation by turning off the carburetor heat and applying engine power to initiate a climb. The flight instructor stated that the engine then "sputtered and produced no power," and he subsequently conducted a forced landing to the field.
During postaccident examination of the airplane, no fuel was observed in either of the two wing fuel tanks; however, the fuel quantity at the time of the accident could not be determined because a fuel line was damaged during impact, and fuel might have leaked out postaccident. An auxiliary fuel supply was plumbed into the fuel system, and the engine started immediately, accelerated smoothly, and ran continuously with no anomalies observed.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined because postaccident testing of the engine revealed no anomalies.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA15LA145
- Event ID
- 20150305X32341
- Case number
- ERA15LA145
- 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: d220eff9e4d0133ecb9f469f8e300c616cbdc4a4466ab558e8218acd655fcd89; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:07:34.749Z.