MIA97LA143 · Cessna 150G
Cessna 150G · Accident: in flight collision with object on approach
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA97LA143
- 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 150G
- 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
- N3235X
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo 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
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Proper alignment, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said he was approaching runway 01, and as he began to flare, 'a big gust of wind blew across the runway.' The airplane started to drift off the centerline, and the pilot attempted to avoid trees by applying 'full power' and gaining airspeed. The airplane continued to drift, and struck trees along side the runway. A witness said, '...it was gusty and the wind was out of the west.' The witness heard power being applied to the airplane's engine and thought the pilot was 'going around.' He watched the airplane and said 'he had a high pitch attitude...the wind started blowing him off the runway...[the airplane] continued to drift...and hit one of the pine trees...he still had power on....' The wind was reported to be from 260 degrees at 10 gusting 16 knots.
Probable cause
failure of the pilot to maintain proper runway alignment during the attempted landing and go-around. Factors relating to the accident were: the gusty crosswind condition, and proximity of trees to the runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA97LA143
- Event ID
- 20001208X07794
- Case number
- MIA97LA143
- 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: 9dfaadd2ce09aac3c66a973d7c8292819b899b58450718cf922cb302a82aa88a; retrieved 2026-09-22T19:55:34.770Z.