ERA15LA368 · Cessna 150M
Cessna 150M · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) en route
From Clearview Airpark (2W2) to Leesburg Executive Airport (JYO)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA15LA368
- 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 150M
- 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
- N714CW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Clearview Airpark (2W2), Westminster, MDTo Leesburg Executive Airport (JYO), Leesburg, VA
- Aircraft age
- About 39 years (built 1976)
- 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)
- 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 › Aircraft power plant
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot reported that, about 10 minutes after departure, when the airplane was at 2,500 ft mean sea level, the engine was not producing full power. He adjusted his course to be near an airport as a precaution. Shortly after, the engine began to run roughly, then lost more power. The pilot declared an emergency and found a field for landing; during the approach, he adjusted his path to avoid power lines and attempted a downwind approach and landing to the opposite direction. He realized he could not make the field, so he landed on an adjacent field of mature corn. As his airplane touched down, it flipped over, which resulted in substantial damage to the airframe. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that the No. 4 cylinder had fractured at the barrel portion of the cylinder, separating from the bottom of the cylinder attach point. Examination of the fracture surfaces revealed a fatigue crack that emanated from a corrosion pit on the outer surface of the barrel portion. The fatigue failure of the No. 4 cylinder barrel led to the loss of engine power.
Probable cause
The in-flight fatigue failure of the No. 4 cylinder barrel, which resulted in a total loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA15LA368
- Event ID
- 20150923X45343
- Case number
- ERA15LA368
- 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: 0d6e3cce1f1f7f85d95d9cebe1193525c90e2d2ed8b390a75d75c159dad6542e; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:48:35.819Z.