CEN23FA352 · Cessna 150
Dallas Flight Center Cessna 150 · Accident: loss of control in flight
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN23FA352
- 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
- 1 · 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 150
- 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
- N5610E
- Operator
- Dallas Flight Center
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 65 years (built 1958)
- 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
- Unknown
- 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 control in flight
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
- 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 airplane operator reported that the pilot had recently been checked out in the accident airplane and was operating in the airport traffic pattern for runway 18 when the accident occurred. There were no witnesses to the accident and no flight track information associated with the accident airplane was recovered. The airplane impacted the ground and came to rest about 220 ft north and 330 ft east of the departure end of the runway. Impact marks indicated that the airplane was travelling to the north when it impacted the ground. The airplane was destroyed by impact forces and a postimpact fire. Examination of the airplane found no preimpact anomalies of the airframe or flight control system. The propeller damage was consistent with low or no power production from the engine. The engine examination was limited due to the extent of the impact and postimpact fire damage; however, the crankshaft gear that drives all of the other gears within the engine accessory case was found separated from the crankshaft, and the four attaching bolts and locating dowel pin were broken. The dowel pin was found to have broken due to shear overstress from rotational motion of the crankshaft gear on the crankshaft; however, the fracture mechanism of the bolts could not be determined due to secondary flattening of the fracture surface. Had this gear become separated during flight it would have resulted in a complete loss of engine power, which is consistent with the limited propeller damage. No other preimpact engine anomalies were found that would have precluded normal operation of the engine. Impact markings at the accident site suggested that the pilot may have been attempting to return to the runway for a forced landing when the airplane impacted terrain in a nose- and left-wing low attitude, consistent with a loss of airplane control. It is most likely that the crankshaft gear separated which resulted in a loss of power, however, impact and fire damage precluded the determination of the failure mode.
Probable cause
The pilot’s loss of airplane control during an attempted forced landing following a loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN23FA352
- Event ID
- 20230807192819
- Case number
- CEN23FA352
- 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: 0b6e4ce4ffb8a267a3ac8888d76189b1b2dd898bf7057abd2f707d2d21f5c49e; retrieved 2026-09-15T08:04:29.412Z.