WPR24LA039 · Cessna 150M
Aero Maintenance Cessna 150M · Accident: fuel exhaustion while maneuvering
From Pearson Field (VUO) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR24LA039
- 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 150M
- 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
- N6266K
- Operator
- Aero Maintenance
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pearson Field (VUO), Vancouver, WATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 48 years (built 1975)
- 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 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
The student pilot used a fuel dipstick ruler to measure the quantity of fuel in each wing tank and reported 13 and 9 gallons, respectively, during the preflight. Shortly after, the student and the flight instructor departed the local airport to practice steep turns and slow-flight maneuvers, including an introduction to power-off stalls and recovery. About an hour into the flight, during a stall maneuver recovery (with carburetor heat on), the instructor increased the throttle setting but the engine remained at idle. As the power remained unchanged, the instructor decided to execute an off-airport landing to a nearby field. Shortly after touchdown, the landing gear separated and the airplane nosed over, resulting in substantial damage to the aft fuselage. Postaccident examination of the airframe and engine did not reveal any mechanical anomalies. Flight control and valvetrain continuity were established. No fuel was recovered at the accident site. The fuel system was traced from each wing tank to the carburetor at the engine through the fuel selector, which rotated normally and was unobstructed. The fuel filter bowl remained secured to its mount and had about 2 oz of fuel consistent with 100LL avgas. Although weather conditions were conducive to serious carburetor icing at cruise power, the flight instructor reported that carburetor heat was applied during the stall maneuvers. The operator reported that the airplane was not refueled after the previous flight or before the accident flight. Based on the engine time that accrued since the last fueling, and the minimal amount of fuel found in the airplane after the accident, the student pilot’s fuel reading was likely incorrect and did not accurately account for the amount of fuel available for the flight. As a result of the accident, the operator updated their procedures requiring all flight instructors to verify and sign off on the reported fuel level after each student preflight.
Probable cause
The flight instructor’s inadequate preflight planning, which resulted in fuel exhaustion and a total loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR24LA039
- Event ID
- 20231120193408
- Case number
- WPR24LA039
- 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: 315bc73ff25c66acad5707a8b3bf94adee97234f2bce64ca551d2ac8660ce6b8; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:18:31.922Z.