ERA18LA050 · Cessna 152
Flying Academy Miami Cessna 152 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Miami Executive Airport (TMB) to Venice Municipal Airport (VNC)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA18LA050
- 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
- N95550
- Operator
- Flying Academy Miami
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Miami Executive Airport (TMB), Miami, FLTo Venice Municipal Airport (VNC), Venice, FL
- 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
- 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 pilot reported that while in level cruise flight on the personal flight, he adjusted the throttle and mixture controls. Shortly after, the engine lost total power. Emergency engine procedures did not restore engine power, and the pilot selected a nearby airport for a forced landing. During the subsequent emergency landing, the airplane struck a perimeter fence before impacting the ground just short of the runway, which resulted in substantial damage to the fuselage. A postaccident engine examination revealed that when the mixture control was manipulated, the cable moved, but the mixture arm on the carburetor did not move. When the fiber lock nut that attached the mixture cable to the mixture arm was tightened, the mixture linkage operated normally. The engine was then started and operated at various power settings. Given the absence of mechanical issues other than the loose mixture control fiber lock nut, it is likely that the mixture linkage became loose and the mixture control arm vibrated to the lean direction, which resulted in the mixture being too lean and the engine losing total power.
Probable cause
The loose nut connecting the mixture control cable to the mixture control arm, which resulted in the pilot’s inability to control the mixture and the subsequent total loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA18LA050
- Event ID
- 20171216X44947
- Case number
- ERA18LA050
- 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: bc0fe8499e9377bcd9d66056c5fd90a5003d820e5bdbe1baa93b866e3bb956d1; retrieved 2026-09-16T06:10:09.668Z.