SEA97LA064 · Cessna 150J
Cessna 150J · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Carbon County Regional Airport / Buck Davis Field (PUC) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA97LA064
- 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 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
- N5514G
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Carbon County Regional Airport / Buck Davis Field (PUC), UTTo 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
- Approach · VFR go-around
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Dual student › Airspeed, not maintained
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Remedial action, delayed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor (CFI) stated that during the recovery from a simulated engine-out procedure, the student applied full power, the nose of the airplane pitched up, and the stall warning horn sounded. The CFI took control of the airplane and pushed the nose down. A few seconds later, the stall warning horn sounded again, and the airplane stalled. The CFI pushed the nose of the airplane down and began to retract the flaps to regain airspeed. When the airspeed had increased to 60-75 mph, the CFI pulled the nose of the airplane up; however, the airplane stalled again. The CFI stated that he was unsure if the airplane would recover, and opted to continue the descent to a road. Just before lining up with the road, the right horizontal stabilizer collided with a road-side reflector pole. The CFI was unable to maintain control of the airplane, which touched down and bounced sideways. The airplane then touched down again and collided with a snow bank. The CFI stated that there was some wind at altitude; however, on the surface, it was calm.
Probable cause
The flight instructor's failure to ensure that the dual student maintained adequate airspeed.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA97LA064
- Event ID
- 20001208X07463
- Case number
- SEA97LA064
- 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: 99451ae71ef933f59e6e65531788612a220595fcadbaee7f557a11c83acb4464; retrieved 2026-09-22T20:19:59.682Z.