NYC96LA055 · Cessna 150M
Cessna 150M · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Lehigh Valley International Airport (ABE) to 2N8 · Marlboro, NJ
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC96LA055
- 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 150M
- 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
- N9153U
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lehigh Valley International Airport (ABE), Allentown, PATo 2N8 · Marlboro, NJ
- 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Loss of control on ground/water
- 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
- Pilot in command › Compensation for wind conditions, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Flight to new destination, not approved
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Readington, NJ, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot (SP) departed on his first solo cross-country flight. The planned flight was to fly to another airport and return to the departure airport. After a 1 hour flight, the SP completed a landing at the intermediate destination airport, and departed on the return leg. About 20 minutes after takeoff, the SP attempted a landing at a second airport, 'for personal urgent needs.' The SP followed two other airplanes and landed on runway 22. During the landing flare the airplane ballooned, veered off the runway, and nosed over. The investigation revealed that the SP was not authorized to land at the second airport. Winds reported at the intermediate destination, 35 miles west of the second airport, were from 300 degrees at 7 knots, gusting to 15. The student pilot had accumulated about 46 hours of total flying experience, of which 17 hours were solo, all in this make and model airplane.
Probable cause
The student pilot's unapproved landing at a second destination during his first solo cross-country, and his inadequate compensation for a cross wind, which resulted in the airplane veering off of the runway and the subsequent nose over.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC96LA055
- Event ID
- 20001208X05192
- Case number
- NYC96LA055
- 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: 78d177f631ae610b1ff5a992c6e4ed23d031b856ee8335c1e62c4b82aa5257b0; retrieved 2026-09-22T22:51:52.441Z.