WPR21LA055 · Cessna 152
Cessna 152 · Accident: fuel contamination en route
From Chino Airport (CNO) to Prescott Regional Airport - Ernest A. Love Field (PRC)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR21LA055
- 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 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
- N757PY
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chino Airport (CNO), Chino, CATo Prescott Regional Airport - Ernest A. Love Field (PRC), Prescott, AZ
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- Fuel contamination
- 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
During the preflight inspection, water was found in a fuel sample taken from the gascolator. Three subsequent samples were taken from the gascolator, which revealed no water. Fuel samples taken from each of the wing tanks revealed no water contamination. The pilot departed on a cross-country flight when, about 10 to 15 minutes after takeoff, the engine lost partial power and the pilot diverted to a nearby airport; he could not recall anything after that.
The airplane came to rest about 1 nautical mile southwest of the diversion airport and sustained substantial damage. A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed water in the right fuel tank, gascolator, the carburetor inlet hose, and the carburetor bowl. A maintenance logbook entry made about 8 days before the accident revealed that contaminated fuel had been found in the fuel system. After the fuel had been drained and the airplane refueled, the engine was started and ran normally.
Based on the available information, the engine lost total power due to fuel contamination, which resulted in a forced landing and substantial damage to the airplane.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to fuel contamination. Contributing to the accident was an inadequate preflight inspection.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR21LA055
- Event ID
- 20201116102293
- Case number
- WPR21LA055
- 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, coordinates, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2020-11-14.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 5cbc59b8722ff838aebcbb125f8525cfca7456211f3887c836c8e117dbca0d3e; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:23:12.251Z.