CEN19LA101 · Cessna 150 F
Cessna 150 F · Accident: fuel starvation during initial climb
From Granite Shoals Bob Sylvester Airpark (2G5) to San Marcos Regional Airport (HYI)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN19LA101
- 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
- N6917F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Granite Shoals Bob Sylvester Airpark (2G5), Granite Shoals, TXTo San Marcos Regional Airport (HYI), San Marcos, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 53 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
- Fuel starvation
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he last fueled the airplane about 5 months before the accident. Before the flight, the pilot conducted a preflight inspection and sumped both wing fuel tanks. The left fuel tank had some sediment present, but as he continued sumping the fuel became clear. The fuel in the right fuel tank ran clear. After engine start, the left tank fuel gauge indicated near empty, and the right fuel tank gauge indicated about 1/4 full. Subsequently, the pilot took off for a personal cross-country flight. After starting a right turn, and about 600 ft above ground level, the engine sputtered and lost power. The pilot then attempted to turn back to the airport but realized that the airplane was too low, so he executed a forced landing to a field with small trees, during which the left wing struck a tree, which resulted in substantial damage to the wing. The pilot reported that, after the accident, he found more sediment in the left tank. He stated that he believed that the low fuel state and the sediment in the left tank may have starved the engine of fuel during the turn and that having more fuel onboard would have “probably been helpful.” However, it is more likely that, due to the low fuel state, when the pilot conducted the right turn, the fuel became unported, resulting in the loss of engine power due to fuel starvation.
Probable cause
The pilot's decision to takeoff with a limited amount of fuel onboard, which unported during a turn, resulting in fuel starvation and a subsequent loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN19LA101
- Event ID
- 20190306X55846
- Case number
- CEN19LA101
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- 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: e1791f7149b4902119abba96924770a10be968b219e5275346bfccd3577fd735; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:38:09.857Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: destination. HYI is San Marcos Regional Airport at San Marcos, TX; 'San Marcus' is a misspelling.