CEN17LA014 · Cessna 150M
Cessna 150M · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Wharton Regional Airport (ARM) to Sugar Land Regional Airport (SGR)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN17LA014
- 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
- N704LE
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wharton Regional Airport (ARM), Wharton, TXTo Sugar Land Regional Airport (SGR), Sugar Land, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 40 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 (total)
- 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 student pilot reported that he was returning from a solo flight when the engine "started failing." The engine speed decreased to about 1,500 rpm with a "significant" vibration. The pilot's efforts to restore engine power were unsuccessful, and the engine ultimately lost total power. He subsequently conducted a forced landing to a plowed field, during which the airplane nosed over.
A postaccident examination of the engine revealed that the No. 2 cylinder exhaust valve was stuck in the "full open" position. Disassembly of the cylinder revealed that the exhaust valve stem exhibited carbon deposits consistent with the stuck valve condition. No other engine anomalies were noted.
Probable cause
The No. 2 cylinder exhaust valve being stuck in the “full open” position due to carbon deposits, which resulted in a total loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN17LA014
- Event ID
- 20161012X11542
- Case number
- CEN17LA014
- 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: fbd984f9ac169216d2410fbe229a0e4a5e75d18c2eeb44e2f923a61c8859357b; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:23:03.550Z.