FLIGHT FINDINGSAVIATION OCCURRENCE MAP
Back to map

CEN19LA275 · Cessna 150 E

15 Aug 2019 · Rio Grande City, TX, United States

Cessna 150 E · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) en route

From Mid Valley International Airport (TXW) to Roma, TX

Report a problem

Event

NTSB case
CEN19LA275
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 E

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
N150CR
Operator
Unknown
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Mid Valley International Airport (TXW), Weslaco, TXTo Roma, TX
Aircraft age
About 54 years (built 1965)
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 (partial)
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
  • Not determined › Not determined

Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.

NTSB narrative

The pilot was on a cross-country flight; about 20 minutes into the flight, the oil temperature gauge indicated a red line reading. The pilot reduced engine power, applied full rich mixture, and reduced airplane pitch in attempt to lower the oil temperature. The airplane was midway between the destination and the nearest airport, and the pilot elected to continue to the destination. The engine then started to run rough and lost all power. The pilot landed the airplane on an open area on hilly and wooded terrain where it impacted a rock pile and nosed over, resulting in substantial damage to the empennage and aft fuselage.

Postaccident examination of the wreckage did not identify anything that would have caused the engine to overheat or the loss of engine power.

Probable cause

The loss of engine power following an increase in oil temperature for undetermined reasons during cruise flight, which resulted in a forced landing on unsuitable terrain.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record CEN19LA275
Event ID
20190819X64723
Case number
CEN19LA275
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: 053fb842e97874fb432b8b74fffc4e576f2c77028e6fa44bbba7a8dac2183bb1; retrieved 2026-09-16T09:48:05.180Z.