NASA · Aviation Safety Reporting System
Pilot flying C-150 aircraft reported loss of engine power in cruise. The pilot applied carburetor heat but the engine eventually lost more power. Pilot diverted and made a precautionary landing.
What is ASRS?
The Aviation Safety Reporting System is NASA's voluntary, confidential, non- punitive incident-reporting system, established 1976. Pilots, controllers, dispatchers, and maintenance technicians file reports describing safety- relevant events. NASA de-identifies every report before adding it to the public database. Reports are not investigated by NASA, the FAA, or the NTSB — they represent the reporter's perspective.
Pilot narrative
Verbatim from the de-identified NASA record. First-person account by the
reporter. NASA strips identifying details (names, company, specific time);
anonymization placeholders are ZZZ,
X, Y.
We were flying in cruise and the engine began to run rough. I started my troubleshooting by turning on the carburetor heat. The engine started to run smooth so I turned the carburetor heat off. As soon as I turned it off the engine almost quit so I turned it back on. At this point it didn't seem to matter and the engine had lost most of its power. It never completely shutoff but I had a very significant loss of power. The engine would give me little bursts of power and then almost shutoff. I diverted and made a precautionary landing in fear I was going to have to land in a field. Luckily we had enough altitude to make it to ZZZ. When we landed we did a couple engine run ups on the ground. The engine seemed to run fine. We are waiting until tomorrow to fly it and are going to have a mechanic look at it to determine what went wrong and what actions need to be taken. We will not be flying it until that is done. I personally suspect carburetor icing that the carburetor heat could not keep up with. In the future I will be turning on carburetor heat every couple mins to prevent any trace of ice.
NASA classification — Anomalies
- Aircraft Equipment Problem
- Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural
NASA classification — Assessments
- Contributing Factors / Situations
- Aircraft · Weather
- Primary Problem
- Aircraft
ASRS reports are voluntarily submitted, de-identified by NASA, and represent the reporter's perspective. The presence of reports on a topic cannot be used to infer prevalence in the National Airspace System. The authoritative source is the NASA ASRS Database Online at asrs.arc.nasa.gov ↗.