ERA21LA307 · Cessna 150 H
Cessna 150 H · Accident: fuel exhaustion en route
From Philadelphia Municipal Airport (MPE) to North Pickens Airport (3M8)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA21LA307
- 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 150 H
- 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
- N561QL
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Philadelphia Municipal Airport (MPE), Philadelphia, MSTo North Pickens Airport (3M8), Reform, AL
- Aircraft age
- About 53 years (built 1968)
- 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 › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Earlier that day, the pilot had flown the airplane on three flights with no airframe or engine issues reported. Prior to the accident flight, he used a dipstick to determine the total quantity of fuel in the left and right fuel tanks, noting they contained 4 gallons and 3 gallons, respectively. He added that the total amount did not account for the unusable fuel amount, which according to the airplane Type Certificate Data Sheet totaled 3.5 gallons. After takeoff with about 3.5 gallons of usable fuel on-board for the flight requiring 4 gallons, the flight climbed to 2,500 ft mean sea level where the pilot leaned the fuel to air ratio and proceeded towards the destination, with slight deviation due to weather while en route. He reported that as the flight continued, he knew he was low on fuel and when south of a nearby airport, he looked at his fuel gauges and in hindsight knew he should have landed there. He elected to continue, and after flying about 35 minutes, he “ran out of [fuel] 8 miles before [he] got there.” About the time of the loss of engine power the left fuel gauge was indicating more than 1/2 gallon and the right fuel gauge indicated empty, but they were lower than he had ever seen them. After experiencing a loss of engine power, he spotted a field below and performed S-turns and slips but landed faster than he liked. While at a slow speed, the nose landing gear rolled into a hole causing it to separate. The airplane came to rest upright with the tail elevated.
The pilot, who was also an airframe and powerplant mechanic, reported that following the accident he drained the fuel strainer and only 2 ounces were recovered. He also drained a little over 1/2 gallon of fuel from the left fuel tank and no fuel from the right fuel tank. On the submitted NTSB Pilot/Operator Aircraft Accident/Incident Report and also verbally, he indicated there was nothing mechanically wrong with the airframe or engine that caused the fuel exhaustion.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) received a report of damage to the airplane and inspected it on July 28, 2021; prior to this the event was not reported. Extensive damage to the engine mount was noted which constituted substantial damage. With no fuel in the fuel tanks and electrical power applied, the left fuel gauge was reading slightly above empty while the right fuel gauge was reading empty.
Probable cause
The pilot’s incorrect preflight planning and poor in-flight planning, resulting in fuel exhaustion. Contributing to the damage was the inadvertent encounter with a hole during the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA21LA307
- Event ID
- 20210729103580
- Case number
- ERA21LA307
- 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: 92ad34508621c42f1d810bf1d5b267003c01e4a196a729e453debff4f6c95877; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:20:47.720Z.