ATL95FA049 · Cessna 150J
Donaldson Air Services Cessna 150J · Accident: airframe, component or system failure while maneuvering
From 7A1 · Greenville, SC to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL95FA049
- 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
- N607BB
- Operator
- Donaldson Air Services
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 7A1 · Greenville, SCTo 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Buzzing, performed
- Pilot in command › Design stress limits of aircraft, exceeded
- Window, flight compartment window/windshield › Fractured
- Window, flight compartment window/windshield › Overload
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE STUDENT PILOT (59 HOURS TOTAL TIME) WAS OBSERVED TO BE 'BUZZING' A RESIDENTIAL NEIGHBORHOOD, SHORTLY PRIOR TO THE ACCIDENT. WITNESSES REPORTED THAT THE AIRCRAFT WOULD ENTER A DIVE, THEN PULL STRAIGHT UP, THEN REPEAT. ONE WITNESS OBSERVED THE AIRCRAFT IN A DIVE, AND NO RECOVERY WAS MADE. THE AIRCRAFT IMPACTED IN A PARKING LOT IN A NEAR VERTICAL, NOSE LOW ATTITUDE. MULTIPLE PIECES OF GREEN PLEXIGLASS WINDSHIELD FRAGMENTS, AND SOME LIGHTWEIGHT ITEMS FROM THE COCKPIT, WERE FOUND WHERE THE AIRCRAFT WAS SEEN BUZZING, WHICH WAS ABOUT 1/2 MILE WEST OF THE ACCIDENT SITE. THERE WAS NO EVIDENCE OF IMPACT DAMAGE ON THE PLEXIGLASS FRAGMENTS. THIS EVIDENCE SUGGESTS THAT THE PILOT OVERSTRESSED THE AIRCRAFT DURING THE LAST DIVE RECOVERY, RESULTING IN THE WINDSHIELD SHATTERING IN FLIGHT.
Probable cause
The pilot's inappropriate 'buzzing' that resulted in exceeding the airplane's design stress limits, the failure of the windshield, and the pilot's subsequent loss of control and impact with the ground.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL95FA049
- Event ID
- 20001207X02921
- Case number
- ATL95FA049
- 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: investigation status. 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: 4fbd3b3f83e0c4dd2d0b7da5e4b8a2a7db9ced2f4a6ef32e31d5ff4eb10c9206; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:52:03.106Z.