SEA96FA134 · Cessna 150B
Cessna 150B · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Friedman Memorial Airport (SUN) to Manila Airport (40U)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA96FA134
- 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
- 2 · 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 150B
- 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
- N1236Y
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Friedman Memorial Airport (SUN), IDTo Manila Airport (40U), Manila, UT
- 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
- En route · climb to cruise
- 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 in flight
- 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
- Stall
- 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 › Airspeed, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Planning/decision, improper
- Pilot in command › Stall, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot performed a preflight inspection of the airplane and had it fully serviced with fuel before taking off. Postaccident calculations indicated that the airplane was about 50 pounds over its maximum gross weight limit, and its center-of-gravity was behind the aft limit. The airport elevation was 5,315 feet; density altitude at the airport was about 5,840 feet. Immediately after departure in VFR conditions, the pilot flew the airplane toward rising terrain, despite the control tower's advisement to initiate a left turn over lower, level terrain. The controller asked the pilot for his position, and the pilot replied, 'I'm heading up the valley . . . east of the airport . . . I'm just about to come out of the valley at the east end.' No distress call was received from the airplane. Subsequently, the airplane crashed at an elevation of about 6,700 feet, below a saddle in mountainous terrain. There was evidence that the airplane had stalled; it came to rest in a steep nose-down attitude with the nose imbedded in the ground and crushing damage to the leading edges of the wings.
Probable cause
the pilot's improper planning/decision, and his failure to maintain adequate airspeed during a climb over rising terrain, which resulted in a stall and collision with terrain. Factors relating to the accident were: failure of the pilot to ensure the airplane was within its weight and balance limitations, high density altitude, and the rising/mountainous terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA96FA134
- Event ID
- 20001208X06099
- Case number
- SEA96FA134
- 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: 8e442367bb43481858d82c4e9ce1e88370a50deab78a8f4a45692cb9cd7b4988; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:19:10.979Z.