WPR21LA038 · Cessna 150F
Cessna 150F · Accident: fuel exhaustion during takeoff
From Chandler Municipal Airport (KCHD) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR21LA038
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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 150F
- 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
- N8700G
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chandler Municipal Airport (KCHD), Chandler, AZTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 54 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
- Takeoff
- 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 exhaustion
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that during the preflight inspection, she and the pilot-rated passenger both visually checked the fuel and reported that there was about 13-14 gallons. The fuel gauge showed over half in both fuel tanks. The purpose of the flight was to practice touch-and-go landings. During the last planned touch-and-go landing the fuel gauge indicated on the quarter mark for both fuel tanks. After takeoff and while on upwind, about 300 ft above the ground, the engine lost total power. The pilot then transferred control of the airplane to the pilot-rated passenger, and he maneuvered the airplane for landing towards an empty helipad. Shortly after touchdown, the airplane impacted a ditch and nosed over. The empennage impacted the ground and sustained substantial damage. The owner of the airplane reported that he estimated the airplane had about 8 gallons of fuel remaining based on the airplane’s recent flight history. The pilot who flew the airplane prior to the accident stated that he returned with about 7 gallons of fuel onboard. The owner reported that the accident flight time was 1 hour and 27 minutes. The owner estimated the fuel rate used and reported that it exceeded the fuel on board for the flight time. The airplane was not refueled before the accident flight. The owner reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s inadequate preflight inspection and fuel planning, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR21LA038
- Event ID
- 20201106102244
- Case number
- WPR21LA038
- 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: 4974074c7195448cde016df0590e170b2fdb6377227a30bcdbd70661b305dba5; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:20:38.323Z.