FTW96LA225 · Cessna 152
Cessna 152 · Accident: in flight collision with object during initial climb
From 1F9 to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW96LA225
- 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 152
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 152
- 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
- N52MA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 1F9To 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
- Initial climb
- 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 object
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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 › Aborted takeoff, not performed
- Pilot in command › Aircraft preflight, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Mixture, improper use of
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While taxiing, the student pilot leaned the fuel/air mixture. He did not recall enrichening the mixture prior to takeoff. The pilot said that during the takeoff roll, he heard a noise that could have been from a lean mixture setting. When the cockpit control panel was examined, the mixture control was found in a leaned position. Witnesses stated that the airplane's engine did not sound like it was at full throttle. They also stated that the airplane 'wallowed' at about 10 feet AGL all the way down the 4,009 foot runway. The airplane impacted the trees at the end of the runway.
Probable cause
the pilot's improper preflight by failing to ensure the mixture control was properly set before takeoff, and his failure to abort the takeoff (while there was sufficient runway remaining).
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW96LA225
- Event ID
- 20001208X05773
- Case number
- FTW96LA225
- 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: 0207c028c6980a92148d3e549046c68cb4163e8ef4a845cc9eb939c2bebae885; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:49:04.455Z.