ERA22LA002 · Cessna 150 M
Blue Angels Aviation Cessna 150 M · Accident: fuel contamination while maneuvering
From Raleigh-Durham International Airport (RDU) to Henderson Oxford Airport (HNZ)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA22LA002
- 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 M
- 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
- N7333A
- Operator
- Blue Angels Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Raleigh-Durham International Airport (RDU), Raleigh, NCTo Henderson Oxford Airport (HNZ), Oxford, NC
- Aircraft age
- About 45 years (built 1976)
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
The student had just initiated a practice emergency descent when the engine suddenly stopped producing power. The student turned the controls over to her flight instructor, who was unable to restart the engine and made a forced landing to a field. During the landing roll out the nosewheel collapsed and the airplane flipped over, which resulted in substantial damage to the vertical stabilizer. Post-accident examination of the engine revealed a clear gel-like substance in the airframe fuel filter bowl, carburetor bowl and carburetor finger screen. Rust-colored corrosion was also observed in the airframe fuel filter bowl and carburetor bowl. No other pre-accident discrepancies were noted with the engine that would have contributed to the loss of engine power.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to fuel contamination.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA22LA002
- Event ID
- 20211004104034
- Case number
- ERA22LA002
- 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: 77d500675aea1563dd6ffada5737b83499846ae1e2f4179f67cd322a37abc174; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:37:08.350Z.