ERA21LA169 · Cessna 150L
Cessna 150L · Accident: fuel contamination en route
From Blairstown Airport (1N7) to Sussex Airport (FWN)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA21LA169
- 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 150L
- 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
- N6544G
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Blairstown Airport (1N7), Blairstown, NJTo Sussex Airport (FWN), Sussex, NJ
- Aircraft age
- About 51 years (built 1970)
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, he had recently purchased the airplane and noted that the fuel tanks were contaminated with water when it was purchased. He purchased and a mechanic installed new fuel tank sumps, fuel cap gaskets, and several other parts. Three days prior to the accident, he inspected the airplane, that was tied down outside, and sumped the fuel tanks, which initially revealed about 1 tablespoon of water. He continued to sump the fuel tanks until only fuel came out, and then performed an engine run-up without any anomalies. On the day of the accident, he performed a preflight inspection of the airplane and observed about 1 tablespoon of water in the strainer from the left tank. He continued sumping the left tank until only fuel was visible in the strainer. He started the engine, taxied, and performed an engine run-up for several minutes with no anomalies noted. He performed a normal take-off and while turning the airplane on course to the destination airport the engine experienced a total loss of power. The pilot elected to perform a forced landing to a field, and during the landing, the airplane struck a tree resulting in substantial damage to the fuselage, wings, and empennage. Postaccident examination of the wreckage revealed that the gascolator and carburetor contained water. The carburetor was drained, reinstalled, and an engine run was performed without any anomalies.
Probable cause
The pilot’s inadequate prefight inspection, during which he failed to detect water contamination in the fuel system, which resulted in a total loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA21LA169
- Event ID
- 20210401102849
- Case number
- ERA21LA169
- 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: 1bf3894f9e289a85c1cd78762193222d5a9cd029df9d2924b7c7981421e6b593; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:54:44.298Z.