WPR25LA305 · Cessna 150F
Cessna 150F · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Marana Regional Airport (AVQ) to Lake Havasu City Airport (HII)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR25LA305
- 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
- Ongoing
- 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 150F
- 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
- N8171S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Marana Regional Airport (AVQ), Marana, AZTo Lake Havasu City Airport (HII), Lake Havasu City, AZ
- Aircraft age
- About 59 years (built 1966)
- 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
- Loss of engine power (total)
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On September 26, 2025, at about 0915 mountain standard time, a Cessna 150F, N8171S, was substantially damaged when it was involved in an accident near Lake Havasu City, Arizona. The flight instructor and student pilot sustained minor injuries. The airplane was operated as a Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91 positioning flight.
The flight instructor reported he and the student pilot were relocating the recently purchased airplane from Marana Regional Airport (AVQ), Marana, Arizona to Boulder City Municipal Airport (BVU), Boulder City, Nevada with a planned fuel stop in Lake Havasu City Airport (HII), Lake Havasu, City, Arizona. He added that the night prior to the accident, the fuel tanks were topped off with fuel.
Prior to departure, a preflight inspection was performed, which included a visual inspection of the fuel in the tanks and sumping of the tanks. No abnormalities were noted.
During the flight, about 15 miles southeast of HII, the engine experienced a partial loss of power. After performing the emergency checklists, he was unable to restore engine power. The flight instructor stated that they were unable to maintain altitude and elected to initiate a forced landing to a highway. Due to the high amount of traffic on the highway, the flight instructor diverted to an open area nearby which was used for remote control airplane operations. During the approach to the field, the airplane overflew their intended landing area, struck a dirt berm and nosed over. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage and wings.
The wreckage was recovered to a secure location for further examination.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR25LA305
- Event ID
- 20251006201794
- Case number
- WPR25LA305
- 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. 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: 0c1b2c71695f1a119016777a5710c101791ed3a83a14158807f1112153501a7b; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:26:07.625Z.