ATL98FA025 · Cessna A150K
Cessna A150K · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Jacksonville Executive at Craig Airport (CRG) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL98FA025
- 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 A150K
- 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
- N1218M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Jacksonville Executive at Craig Airport (CRG)To 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
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Airspeed, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Stall, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot (PIC) began a routine banner tow mission with a 2nd pilot aboard. The airplane was observed to approach for the banner pick-up. A witness indicated the approach and pick-up appeared normal. After the banner hook-up, the pilot initiated a climb attitude. Seconds into the climb, the airplane was observed in a steep nose up attitude. Subsequently, the airplane collided with the ground several hundred feet northeast of the banner pickup point in a nose down attitude. The eyewitness also stated that the engine continued to run throughout the maneuver. The airframe damage was typical of a stall impact. The 2nd pilot was a contract sales person for the banner tow operation, but was not cleared as a banner tow pilot. The aircraft's maximum certificated gross weight was 1600 pounds. The actual gross weight at takeoff was calculated to be 1647 pounds. The banner weighed 35 pounds. Examination of the airframe and engine assembly failed to disclose a mechanical malfunction or a component failure.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain adequate flying speed following a banner pick up, which resulted in a stall and an uncontrolled collision with the ground. A related factor was: the pilot allowed the maximum certificated gross weight of the airplane to be exceeded.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL98FA025
- Event ID
- 20001208X09255
- Case number
- ATL98FA025
- 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: 5ac93e0ef6f3c68ec07d0386c6dde355c4ae197a950bc31a2d7f59a3522f892d; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:43:39.907Z.