CEN15LA217 · Cessna 150F
Cessna 150F · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) en route
From Wausau Downtown Airport (AUW) to Neillsville Municipal Airport (VIQ)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN15LA217
- 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 150F
- 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
- N8558G
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wausau Downtown Airport (AUW), Wausau, WITo Neillsville Municipal Airport (VIQ), Neillsville, WI
- Aircraft age
- About 49 years (built 1966)
- 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 (partial)
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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 private pilot reported that the engine start and run-up were normal. About 20 minutes after takeoff for the personal cross-country flight, the engine power decreased to idle. The pilot applied the carburetor heat, and the engine regained cruise power. About 2 minutes later, he turned the carburetor heat off. The engine continued to produce cruise power for about 4 minutes before it again decreased to idle. The pilot reapplied carburetor heat, and the engine power increased for about 1 minute before dropping back to idle. The pilot cycled the carburetor heat and verified the position of the engine and fuel controls, but he was unable to regain engine power. The airplane contacted trees shortly after touching down in a field.
A postaccident examination of the airplane and engine did not reveal any mechanical failures or malfunctions that would have precluded normal operation. Although the weather conditions were conducive for the formation of carburetor ice at glide power settings, the engine was set at cruise power when the initial loss of engine power occurred, and the application of carburetor heat did not regain the engine power. The airplane departed with about 10 gallons of fuel onboard. The flight lasted about 40 minutes, and the airplane consumes about 6 gallons per hour, which would have left about 6 gallons of fuel on board at the time of the accident, 3.5 gallons of which were unusable. The postaccident examination revealed that fuel was onboard the airplane. The investigation could not determine the reason for the loss of engine power.
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined because a postaccident examination of the airframe and engine did not reveal any anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN15LA217
- Event ID
- 20150504X63603
- Case number
- CEN15LA217
- 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: ebdae96015d0b0b093462889cabbbc771ef411fe1cbb84bba901c1b65a331b63; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:17:04.760Z.