CEN21LA408 · Cessna 150 H
Cessna 150 H · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From McKinney National Airport (KTKI) to Morrilton Municipal Airport (KBDQ)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN21LA408
- 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
- N50055
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From McKinney National Airport (KTKI), McKinney, TXTo Morrilton Municipal Airport (KBDQ), Morrilton, AR
- 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
- 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
- Loss of engine power (total)
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While in cruise flight, the airplane’s engine began to run rough. As the pilot was attempting to restore engine power, the engine experienced a total loss of engine power. The pilot performed a forced landing to a field and the airplane collided with terrain. A postaccident examination of the engine revealed that the No. 2 cylinder exhaust valve had failed, damaging the piston head and resulting in a loss of engine power. Machining of the fracture surfaces precluded determining the mode of failure. The engine was last overhauled about 32 years before the accident with just over 1,030 hours logged on the components. The engine manufacturer recommends an overhaul every 1,800 hours or 12 years.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to the failure of the No. 2 cylinder exhaust valve for reasons that could not be determined.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN21LA408
- Event ID
- 20210908103824
- Case number
- CEN21LA408
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- 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. 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: 9970bf5eaa156db826ee55e561b4cdf5a66c5bad15949f1eb4683e526840401c; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:30:29.222Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: destination. KBDQ is Morrilton Municipal Airport at Morrilton, Arkansas; the city name has a doubled 't' in the record.