CEN17LA153 · Cessna 152
Harvey & Rihn Aviation Cessna 152 · Accident: fuel contamination on approach
From La Porte Municipal Airport (T41) to La Porte Municipal Airport (T41)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN17LA153
- 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
- N95551
- Operator
- Harvey & Rihn Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From La Porte Municipal Airport (T41), La Porte, TXTo La Porte Municipal Airport (T41), La Porte, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 33 years (built 1984)
- 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 final
- 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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot was conducting a postmaintenance test flight. He reported that no evidence of water was found in samples from the main fuel tanks during the preflight inspection. He added that, during approach to the runway, the engine lost power. He attempted to restore power but was unsuccessful. There was no remaining runway in front of him, so he turned the airplane to avoid a ditch and landed on the soft ground. The airplane nosed over, which resulted in substantial damage to the empennage and firewall.
During postaccident examination of the airplane, water was found in the fuel lines, engine fuel bowl, and carburetor. An examination of the engine and fuel systems revealed no mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. It is likely that the loss of engine power resulted from water contamination of the fuel system.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to fuel contamination, which resulted from the pilot’s inadequate preflight inspection that did not detect water contamination.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN17LA153
- Event ID
- 20170412X71451
- Case number
- CEN17LA153
- 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: 6ed46f5ff7a1d91b4de0163558869625ea76d61be59c713aadac22fd4b67345e; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:09:49.908Z.