LAX99LA154 · Cessna A150L
Cessna A150L · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water while maneuvering
From Flagstaff Pulliam Airport (FLG) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX99LA154
- 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
- 0 · 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 A150L
- 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
- N6085J
- Operator
- Thomas E. Dutton · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Flagstaff Pulliam Airport (FLG), Flagstaff, AZTo not recorded
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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 › Altitude/clearance, misjudged
- Pilot in command › Buzzing, intentional
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot and passenger departed Flagstaff and flew about 13 miles east-southeast until reaching Lake Mary. While over the lake, the pilot performed an acrobatic maneuver which was described by a boater as being a roll. Thereafter, the boater observed the airplane passing overhead at an altitude low enough to wave at its occupants. The passenger in the airplane reported that he waved at the boaters, and he observed them wave back. The airplane, described by the passenger as low enough to the lake to have been 'grazing' it, then maneuvered toward the shoreline and adjacent tree-covered rising terrain. The passenger recalled that although the airplane's engine was developing 2,500 rpm and was operating 'fine,' the pilot was unable to gain enough altitude to clear the trees and impacted them during an avoidance turn. Responding officials reported that the airplane collided with approximate 6,500-foot mean sea level terrain, about 300 feet above the lake and 1/8-mile beyond the shoreline. The airplane was at (or over) its maximum certificated gross weight. No airplane records were located. The calculated density altitude exceeded 7,100 feet.
Probable cause
The pilot's intentional buzzing and misjudged altitude/clearance with the nearby rising terrain. Contributing factors were the high density, the airplane's high gross weight, and the pilot's improper in-flight decisions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX99LA154
- Event ID
- 20001205X00501
- Case number
- LAX99LA154
- 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 1999-04-18.
- API snapshot SHA-256: f3d38737080f4d59bcfa767f105dd8eee8d7e50c1ef09aa3db773309385bf124; retrieved 2026-09-21T11:08:49.789Z.