ERA25LA028 · Cessna 150 H
Cessna 150 H · Accident: fuel starvation en route
From Northern Aroostook Regional Airport (FVE) to Houlton International Airport (HUL)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA25LA028
- 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
- N22197
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Northern Aroostook Regional Airport (FVE), Frenchville, METo Houlton International Airport (HUL), Houlton, ME
- Aircraft age
- About 57 years (built 1967)
- 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 · cruise
- 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 starvation
- 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 › Aircraft systems
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
About 15 minutes into the flight, while flying at 2,500 ft mean sea level (msl), the airplane encountered environmental conditions that were favorable for the formation of serious carburetor ice at cruise engine power settings. The flight continued and the pilot noted that the engine’s output dropped from about 2,300 rpm to about 1,500 rpm. He applied carburetor heat and left it applied, cycled the fuel shutoff valve, pumped the throttle, and checked the ignition switch, but those efforts did not restore power. After descending to 2,000 ft msl, he turned to return to the departure airport but performed a forced landing in a field after recognizing the flight was unable to reach the departure airport. The nose landing gear collapsed during the landing roll after encountering a furrow, resulting in substantial damage to the engine mount and right wing. Postaccident examination of the engine and its systems revealed no evidence of preimpact failure or malfunction. A High Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) model sounding created for the approximate time and location where the pilot reported the airplane began descending consistent with the reported loss of engine power revealed that the temperature and dew point were 34.5° F and 33.8° F, respectively. The values were close to 100% relative humidity. Thus, it is likely that during cruise flight carburetor ice formed and subsequently resulted in the reported loss of engine power. The pilot’s delayed application of carburetor heat during the cruise portion of the flight while operating in environmental conditions favorable for serious carburetor ice at cruise power allowed for the formation of carburetor ice.
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power due to carburetor ice as a result of the pilot’s delayed use of carburetor heat while operating in environmental conditions conducive to serious carburetor icing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA25LA028
- Event ID
- 20241029195407
- Case number
- ERA25LA028
- 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: 54b97f6dd2ae422141e88028a1a8464d1486bdcfd0b4648b52f8bf1383faa787; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:25:52.694Z.