FTW98LA147 · Cessna 150L
Cessna 150L · Accident: hard landing
From M03 to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98LA147
- 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 150L
- 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
- N21915
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From M03To 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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 › Flare, improper
- Pilot in command › Recovery from bounced landing, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the student pilot's first solo landing attempt, the aircraft touched down 'hard' on runway 18, bounced and impacted the runway with the nose landing gear, folding it aft. The aircraft came to a stop on the runway, resting on its main landing gear and engine cowling. The student pilot reported that 'everything seemed to appear good on approach until I felt a shift of wind veer me off the glide path. I felt I had enough altitude to salvage the landing, but evidently I did not.' The student reported that the wind was from the south at 10 knots. The student's flight instructor reported that the aircraft appeared to be stabilized on final approach, and the aircraft crossed the runway threshold at about 50 feet agl. As the aircraft crossed the threshold its wing dipped right and then left. The aircraft rounded out at about 6 feet in a level attitude, and then lost altitude quickly and touched down in a three point landing. The aircraft bounced back into the air, the nose dropped and struck the runway with the nose gear.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper landing flare which resulted in a hard landing and her improper recovery procedures for a bounced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98LA147
- Event ID
- 20001211X09670
- Case number
- FTW98LA147
- 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: bd6bb3e9f3fe140ab1071c71192301a19522707f96ae5e79d31061cada493cf0; retrieved 2026-09-22T17:59:00.036Z.