CEN19LA064 · Cessna 152
Cessna 152 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Shawnee Regional Airport (KSNL) to Lackland Air Force Base (KSKF)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN19LA064
- 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
- N6202M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Shawnee Regional Airport (KSNL), Shawnee, OKTo Lackland Air Force Base (KSKF), San Antonio, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 38 years (built 1980)
- 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
- 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)
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot was conducting a personal, cross-country flight with one passenger onboard. The pilot reported that, about 2 1/2 to 2 3/4 hours into the flight, the engine started to lose power. The pilot contacted air traffic control for vectors to the nearest airport. The pilot then checked the gauges and applied carburetor heat. The engine initially responded; however, a few minutes later, the engine lost all power, and the pilot's additional attempts to restore power were unsuccessful. The pilot did not think that the airplane could reach the nearest airport, so he established a glide for an off-airport forced landing, during which the airplane impacted trees and terrain and sustained substantial damage.
During recovery of the airplane wreckage, the fuel tanks were found intact and empty. Additionally, there was no evidence of fuel leakage on the ground. The pilot reported that the airplane ran out of fuel and that the accident could have been prevented by better calculation and review of distance, fuel, and time in flight.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight and in-flight fuel planning, which resulted in the total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN19LA064
- Event ID
- 20181231X23238
- Case number
- CEN19LA064
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2018-12-29.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 33b4118450d0771c9bbf1a8679f7268c7041c350ffaff424c04a4e3b9deb51f7; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:31:18.668Z.