WPR18LA056 · Cessna 150L M
Cessna 150L M · Accident: fuel related en route
From San Gabriel Valley Airport (EMT) to French Valley Airport (F70)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR18LA056
- 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 150L M
- 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
- N6627G
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From San Gabriel Valley Airport (EMT), El Monte, CATo French Valley Airport (F70), Murrieta/Temecu, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 47 years (built 1970)
- 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
- Fuel related
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Twenty-five minutes into the cross-country flight, the airplane's engine lost total power. After an unsuccessful attempt to restart the engine, the pilot declared an emergency and selected a forced landing site. The airplane touched down on the soft terrain, nosed over, and came to rest inverted, resulting in substantial damage to the engine firewall, engine mounts, and empennage. Postaccident examination revealed that the fuel drain plug was blocked, and debris was found in the carburetor fuel bowl, both of which likely obstructed the fuel delivery system. This obstruction would have inhibited fuel flow to the engine and resulted in a loss of power. The fuel filters at the wing roots, fuel strainer, and carburetor fuel inlet were not obstructed, but may have been cleaned during the airplane's most recent annual inspection, which took place 47 flight hours before the accident. The carburetor had not been overhauled or inspected in its history of service.
Probable cause
The presence of debris in the carburetor and blockage of the fuel delivery system, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation. Contributing to the accident was the lack of maintenance to the carburetor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR18LA056
- Event ID
- 20171226X84739
- Case number
- WPR18LA056
- 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, cause areas. 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: 277cdf66737e22db47a47f9ebbfece5436da0ccb7e0abcaf155401e0f1e14132; retrieved 2026-09-16T06:14:27.622Z.