LAX98LA080 · Cessna 150F
Cessna 150F · Accident: hard landing
From Camarillo International Airport (CMA) to San Carlos Airport (SQL)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX98LA080
- 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
- N7911F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Camarillo International Airport (CMA), Camarillo, CATo San Carlos Airport (SQL)
- 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
- Landing
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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 › Aircraft preflight, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Airspeed, excessive
- Pilot in command › Directional control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Ground loop/swerve, not corrected
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The aircraft was modified by STC to a conventional landing gear configuration. The pilot reported that he did not sufficiently reduce the airspeed during the approach and the aircraft 'bounced about 2-3 feet' on the touchdown. At that point, the seat slid backwards about 3 to 4 inches and the pilot stated that the abrupt seat movement caused his loss of control. The aircraft then ground looped, turned approximately 90 degrees, and came to a stop upright on the runway. Aircraft maintenance records disclosed that Airworthiness Directive 87-20-03R2, which pertains to the inspection of the seat tracks, had been complied with. The pilot reported to an FAA inspector that he had forgotten to engage the seat locking pin before the flight.
Probable cause
The pilot's excessive airspeed, which resulted in a bounced landing, and, his failure to ensure that his seat locking pin was engaged, which caused his seat to move backwards during the touchdown and resulted in his loss of directional control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX98LA080
- Event ID
- 20001211X09470
- Case number
- LAX98LA080
- 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: 4c2d86aad03b682ec1fd7efd6a788d5d6e103f82827988ad486f640d64c0b2cd; retrieved 2026-09-22T18:06:10.940Z.