IAD97LA019 · Cessna 150
Cessna 150 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Williams County Airport (0G6) to Walker/Rowe Waterloo Airport (4C2)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD97LA019
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna 150
- 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
- N5627E
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Williams County Airport (0G6), Bryan, OHTo Walker/Rowe Waterloo Airport (4C2), Waterloo, IN
- 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 · 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
- In flight encounter with weather
- 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
- Visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC)
- 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, uncontrolled
- Pilot in command › Spatial disorientation
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A friend flew the accident pilot to an airport to pick up the accident pilot's airplane. Before takeoff, the noninstrument-rated acident pilot had stated that he had not flown at night in over a year. The two pilots then departed in their respective airplanes, at night, to return to their home airport. Within minutes of their take off, the two airplanes encountered a snow squall. The lead pilot radioed the accident pilot and told him to return to the departure airport. After completion of his turn, the lead pilot saw what he thought was an airplane go underneath his airplane. The lead pilot radioed the accident pilot, concerned about his altitude. The lead pilot thought the accident pilot's response was, 'I'm lost, or I've lost it.' The lead pilot did not hear from the accident pilot again. A witness on the ground stated that there were high winds and a heavy snow squall in the area. He observed two airplanes coming from the east. One airplane turned and headed southwest, and the other turned over his neighbor's house, continued the turn, and was approximately 200 feet when it went into a steep angle and crashed. The witness stated that 'the motor was on full power the whole time.'
Probable cause
the pilot's Inadvertent VFR flight into instrument meteorological conditions resulting in spatial disorientation and subsequent loss of control of the airplane. Factors to this accident were the night conditions and snow.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD97LA019
- Event ID
- 20001208X07050
- Case number
- IAD97LA019
- 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: ff8dbbf883c333625c58eb56c8fd9ac66b07de7c40783bd73ec5607e7a7a2882; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:07:50.833Z.