ERA17LA015 · Cessna 150 F
Cessna 150 F · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) during initial climb
From Berry Hill Airport (7GA7) to Cherokee County Regional Airport (CNI)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA17LA015
- 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 150 F
- 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
- N7948F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Berry Hill Airport (7GA7), Stockbridge, GATo Cherokee County Regional Airport (CNI), Canton, GA
- Aircraft age
- About 50 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
- Initial climb
- 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 oper/perf/capability
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot completed an engine run-up before the personal flight with no anomalies noted. The pilot rotated the airplane about halfway down the runway. He stated that the airplane was not climbing normally during the takeoff, and a ground witness heard the engine making "popping" noises. The pilot attempted to clear trees off the end of the runway in order to make a controlled landing in the field on the other side, but the airplane impacted the field; the pilot was unable to recall any events that happened after passing over a tree. Examination of the wreckage revealed that the airplane displayed impact damage that included aftward crushing of the airplane's nose and the leading edges of both wings, which was consistent with an aerodynamic stall and impact with the ground in a nose-low attitude. Examination of the engine revealed the No. 4 cylinder's exhaust valve was stuck in the fully open position and coated in a carbon-like material. The stuck valve likely reduced engine power and airplane performance during the takeoff, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall.
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power due to a stuck exhaust valve and the pilot's exceedance of the airplane’s critical angle of attack, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA17LA015
- Event ID
- 20161016X51930
- Case number
- ERA17LA015
- 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: ab9513550612499edbbc82fdc71eb4dff449c2828f908fb0151383ec6923fcf5; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:24:04.415Z.