CHI98LA131 · Cessna 150J
Cessna 150J · Accident: loss of engine power during initial climb
From Canton-Plymouth-Mettetal Airport (1D2) to Willow Run Airport (YIP)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI98LA131
- 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 150J
- 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
- N50566
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Canton-Plymouth-Mettetal Airport (1D2)To Willow Run Airport (YIP), Belleville, MI
- 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The aircraft was on an instructional flight and had just taken off from a stop-and-go landing. The instructor pilot reported that during climb there was a power interruption prior to impact, and he initiated a forced landing in a residential area, and that at no time did he feel that the engine power had returned. Subsequent to the accident, an examination of the airplane and engine failed to reveal any mechanical anomalies other than those associated with the impact and post accident fire. He initiated a forced landing in a residential area. Ground scars related with the initial impact were noted on a residential street. The aircraft then proceeded through a boulevard colliding with a mailbox and leaving horizontal slashes in the concrete sidewalk consistent with propeller strikes. The aircraft then came to rest in a driveway with the main landing gear bent aft. The propeller showed evidence of rotation with chordwise scratching and nicks. One blade of the propeller was broken off and was located about one city block away from the wreckage. The blade had a curled tip and also evidence of chordwise scratching.
Probable cause
The undetermined loss of power reported by the pilot. Contributing factors were the residential nature of the landing area and unsuitable landing terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI98LA131
- Event ID
- 20001211X09824
- Case number
- CHI98LA131
- 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: f458f2c26fb71cc154a4e177845fc1063051029e357383e16ef321165e2ee10b; retrieved 2026-09-21T11:34:21.805Z.