GAA15CA020 · Cessna 150
Cessna 150 · Accident: fuel contamination during initial climb
From Dalton Airport (3DA) to Oakland County International Airport (KPTK)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA15CA020
- 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
- 0
- 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 150
- 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
- N7987E
- Operator
- Thomas Carr
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dalton Airport (3DA), Dalton, MITo Oakland County International Airport (KPTK), Waterford, MI
- Aircraft age
- About 55 years (built 1960)
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a preflight examination, the pilot identified fuel contamination from water, in his airplane's fuel tanks. He removed approximately one quart of water each from the right wing, left wing, belly drain and engine strainer. He thought he removed all the water from the fuel system and started the engine. He performed an engine run up at twenty-two hundred revolutions per minute. After a five minute engine run, the pilot decided the airplane was suitable for flight and initiated a take-off. Upon reaching an altitude of four hundred feet, the engine lost power. He entered an emergency descent and forced landing, subsequently impacting several trees and eventually the terrain. The airplane sustained substantial damage to wings, fuselage, and empennage.
Probable cause
Loss of engine power due to fuel contamination. A factor contributing to the accident was the pilot's inadequate preflight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA15CA020
- Event ID
- 20150325X74504
- Case number
- GAA15CA020
- 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: fc4495cb37cc0c4ce0352b4f7a0964a7e226a6a1870d379e1444c305e0d523fe; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:10:59.388Z.