CEN21LA278 · Cessna 152
US Aviation Academy Cessna 152 · Accident: fuel exhaustion en route
From Perot Field/Fort Worth Alliance Airport (AFW) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN21LA278
- 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 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
- N68851
- Operator
- US Aviation Academy
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Perot Field/Fort Worth Alliance Airport (AFW), Fort Worth, TXTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 40 years (built 1981)
- 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 · cruise
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot reported the airplane had fuel exhaustion during cruise flight that resulted in a total loss of engine power and a forced landing in a field. The airplane touched down on the main landing gear and the pilot was able to keep the nose landing gear off the ground until the airplane traversed through a low area in the field, which caused the airplane to pitch down and the nose landing gear to collapse when it impacted the ground. The left wing rear spar was substantially damaged during the forced landing. The pilot did not report any mechanical malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. The pilot reported that he visually inspected the airplane’s two 13-gallon fuel tanks before the flight and had estimated that each fuel tank was about ¾ full (about 19.5 gallons total). He did not utilize a calibrated dipstick to measure the actual fuel remaining in either fuel tank. According to flight track data, the loss of engine power occurred about 1 hour 25 minutes into the flight. The pilot stated that his inaccurate estimation of the fuel level before the flight had resulted in fuel exhaustion during cruise flight and a total loss of engine power.
Probable cause
The pilot’s inaccurate estimate of the fuel level during his preflight inspection, which resulted in fuel exhaustion during cruise flight and a total loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN21LA278
- Event ID
- 20210621103295
- Case number
- CEN21LA278
- 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: 8d5e9afbeac1b93d25ccf7a5a54e5e8de8b9a6b0853fdef087f723d99404492e; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:11:10.736Z.