CEN19LA186 · Cessna 150 L
Cessna 150 L · Accident: fuel starvation on approach
From Southwest Minnesota Regional Airport - Marshall/Ryan Field (MML) to Millard Airport (MLE)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN19LA186
- 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 L
- 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
- N5256Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Southwest Minnesota Regional Airport - Marshall/Ryan Field (MML), Marshall, MNTo Millard Airport (MLE), Omaha, NE
- Aircraft age
- About 47 years (built 1972)
- 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 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
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he was on final approach to land after a 3-hour flight when the airplane's engine would not respond to throttle inputs then lost power. He attempted to restart the engine; however, he could not restore engine power. The pilot executed a forced landing to a road and the airplane's right wing struck a fence, resulting in substantial damage. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that 2.5 to 3 gallons of fuel remained in the left fuel tank and the right tank was compromised during the accident. No anomalies were found with the airplane, engine, or fuel system that would have precluded normal operation. The cruise performance chart for the accident airplane model indicated that for a flight at 2,500 ft mean sea level, at 77% engine power should yield 3.9 hours of endurance. The pilot stated that he had topped off the fuel tanks at his departure airport and had flown about 3 hours at the time of the accident; however the airplane’s power setting and any potential headwinds are unknown. Based on the available information, it is likely that, with the low fuel level, when the pilot lowered the nose of the airplane during the approach, the fuel became unported and the engine lost power due to fuel starvation.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power due to fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN19LA186
- Event ID
- 20190628X03218
- Case number
- CEN19LA186
- 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, coordinates, 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: b4016c32cc1806b40940471326482955b1c393e3d031404b466c1d99707a403a; retrieved 2026-09-16T09:19:47.362Z.