LAX99FA091 · Cessna 150J
Cessna 150J · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water on approach
From Castle Airport (MER) to O68 · CA
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX99FA091
- 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
- API-reported fatalities
- 1 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- 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 150J
- 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
- N50878
- Operator
- John E. Newman · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Castle Airport (MER), Atwater, CATo O68 · CA
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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 · VFR pattern turn to base
- First occurrenceThe 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
- In flight collision with terrain/water
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Impairment(alcohol)
- Pilot in command › Proper altitude, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a dark night landing approach, the aircraft collided with trees and terrain while on base leg for runway 26. Following a telephone conversation between the pilot and his wife, during which he indicated that he was emotionally upset, the pilot took off with the intention of flying 26 miles to his home-base airport. The uncontrolled airport's rotating beacon, runway lights, and visual approach slope indicator system (VASI) were functional. As the pilot approached the airport he made several radio transmissions during which he indicated his landing intentions. The airplane prematurely descended. On the traffic pattern's base leg, about 0.5 miles from the approach end of the runway, the airplane collided with trees and terrain. The distance between the initial point of impact and the main wreckage was 222 feet. The airframe and engine were subsequently examined. No malfunctions were noted. Remains of a recently purchased vodka bottle were found in the wreckage. The toxicological examination revealed the presence of both prescription and over-the-counter drugs. Ethanol was detected in the pilot's blood, vitreous fluid, and urine. The blood level was reported at 0.246 percent, over 6 times the FAA limit.
Probable cause
The pilot's premature descent into terrain during a dark nighttime approach. Also causal was his physiological impairment due to alcohol. A contributing factor was his psychological condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX99FA091
- Event ID
- 20001205X00177
- Case number
- LAX99FA091
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1999-02-06.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 2e7de610fd4e08755a4baf865d62eae9ec7dedd94858f484eaee683504dc87f0; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:15:18.642Z.