WPR24LA091 · Cessna 150M
Puget Sound Flyers Cessna 150M · Accident: fuel exhaustion on approach
From William R Fairchild International Airport (KCLM) to Seattle Paine Field International Airport (KPAE)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR24LA091
- 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
- N3538V
- Operator
- Puget Sound Flyers
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From William R Fairchild International Airport (KCLM), Port Angeles, WATo Seattle Paine Field International Airport (KPAE), Everett, WA
- Aircraft age
- About 49 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
- Approach
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported the airplane contained 10 gallons of fuel before departing for a local area flight. At the conclusion of the flight, and while on final approach for the destination airport, the airplane experienced a total loss of engine power with the propeller windmilling. The pilot applied carburetor heat, and increased the mixture to full rich, but was unable to restore power, noting 2 gallons of fuel remaining which was below the amount of 2.5 gallons known to be unusable. The pilot executed a forced landing and impacted treed terrain substantially damaging the airplanes wings, fuselage and empennage. The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s improper fuel 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 WPR24LA091
- Event ID
- 20240220193814
- Case number
- WPR24LA091
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2024-02-17.
- API snapshot SHA-256: d85019ce02acc54605876b26f903ae292b8d78e061dd7b97ec9d5b31accc37d6; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:31:19.244Z.