CEN16LA064 · Cessna 305A A
Cessna 305A A · Accident: fuel contamination on approach
From 52LA · Bell City, LA to Southland Field (UXL)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN16LA064
- 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 305A A
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 305
- 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
- N5312G
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 52LA · Bell City, LATo Southland Field (UXL), Sulpher, LA
- Aircraft age
- About 64 years (built 1951)
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern crosswind
- 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 › Aircraft power plant
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After about 50 minutes of uneventful flight, the commercial pilot was performing touch-and-go landings. After completing the second touch-and-go landing, the pilot applied full power for takeoff, pushed the carburetor heat control to the forward (off) position, rotated off the runway, and started a standard climb to pattern altitude. While turning on crosswind to set up for a full-stop landing, the engine lost total power. The pilot executed a forced landing in a field with dense, wet vegetation, which resulted in substantial damage to both wings and the fuselage. The pilot-rated passenger reported that the entire flight was normal until the loss of engine power and forced landing. The weather conditions were conducive to the formation of moderate carburetor icing at cruise power or serious icing at descent power. Postaccident examination of the engine revealed that the carburetor was intact and was not impact damaged before disassembly. Further examination found water and corrosion in the carburetor bowl. Although the weather conditions were conducive to the formation of carburetor icing, because of the amount of water and corrosion found in the carburetor, it is likely that the fuel system was contaminated, which caused the loss of engine power.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power due to water and contaminants in the carburetor, which resulted in a forced landing to a wet field.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN16LA064
- Event ID
- 20151216X05156
- Case number
- CEN16LA064
- 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, coordinates. 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: b1904cddf422dde01025faf030e0c47084f6e5e1c0e17d590eb9d9298d001ad2; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:02:09.056Z.