FTW98LA048 · Cessna 150F
Cessna 150F · Accident: in flight collision with object during initial climb
From No airport to Brigham City Regional Airport (BMC)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98LA048
- 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 150F
- 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
- N7934F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From No airportTo Brigham City Regional Airport (BMC), 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
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Altitude/clearance, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was attempting to take off from an off-airport field and admitted he 'allowed impatience. . .to cloud (his) judgment.' He monitored the local AWOS (Automatic Weather Observation Station) broadcast and determined the wind to be from 315 degrees at 8 knots. The proposed takeoff direction was aligned with the wind. The temperature was 55 degrees F. The pilot determined there was 30 percent more field available than that required for a short-field takeoff. The takeoff ground roll was about 300 feet using 20 degrees of flaps. After liftoff, the right wing struck a tree, and the pilot decided to make an immediate landing. During the landing, the airplane struck a fence that surrounded the field. The Cessna 150F Pilot's Operating Handbook limited flaps to 10 degrees for short-field takeoffs. The investigation also revealed the pilot's third class medical certificate had expired, and he had not accomplished a recent biennial flight review.
Probable cause
failure of the pilot to maintain lateral (or vertical) clearance from a tree, during takeoff. Related factors were: the tree, and the pilot's improper use of flaps.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98LA048
- Event ID
- 20001208X09029
- Case number
- FTW98LA048
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1997-11-01.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 519273c5cabc98ba9865ebdc5f1299e7bfa499612d5d2b8b670cfa57a0f89546; retrieved 2026-09-22T18:14:08.844Z.