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ERA15LA248 · Cessna 152

18 Jun 2015 · St. Augustine, FL, United States

Florida Aviation Career Training Cessna 152 · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) during takeoff

From Northeast Florida Regional Airport (SGJ) to Northeast Florida Regional Airport (SGJ)

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Event

NTSB case
ERA15LA248
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
N6553L
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Northeast Florida Regional Airport (SGJ), St. Augustine, FLTo Northeast Florida Regional Airport (SGJ), St. Augustine, FL
Aircraft age
About 35 years (built 1980)
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
Takeoff
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)
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 she and the student were performing practice takeoffs and landings in the airport traffic pattern. During the fourth takeoff, at an altitude of about 200 ft above ground level, the engine lost partial power. The instructor took control of the airplane and initiated a left turn to return to the airport. The airplane touched down in a grassy area perpendicular to a taxiway, the nose landing gear collapsed, and the airplane continued across the taxiway, where it came to rest upright and sustained substantial damage. Photographs of the airplane after the accident showed evidence of some fuel spillage on the taxiway; however, the fuel on board at the time of the accident was not quantified. There were no anomalies noted during an engine test run with a replacement carburetor and propeller. Thus, the reason for the loss of engine power could not be determined.

Probable cause

A partial loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined based on the available information.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record ERA15LA248
Event ID
20150624X93848
Case number
ERA15LA248
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: 0808a4ad293d3fa2c728382f99ffaaa7f5dcfcbd724aa2439d1e8e3cee742d9f; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:27:24.579Z.