FTW98FA189 · Cessna 150F
Cessna 150F · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Muskogee-Davis Regional Airport (MKO) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98FA189
- 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 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
- N8720G
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Muskogee-Davis Regional Airport (MKO), Muskogee, OKTo 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
- 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 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Raising of flaps, not performed
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Stall, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor lost control of the airplane while on initial climb during an instructional flight. The airplane was observed by a witness to be performing touch and go landings on runway 35. While on the initial climb portion of the third takeoff, the witness observed the airplane bank to the left as the nose dropped towards the ground. The airplane impacted on the airfield, in the infield grass area. Examination of the wreckage site revealed that the airplane impacted the ground on a measured heading of 185 degrees in a left turn, in a nose low attitude. The wing flap actuator was found in the fully extended position. The winds at the time of the accident were reported from 350 degrees at 11 knots, gusting to 17 knots. The owner's manual for the airplane states that flap deflections of 30 and 40 degrees are not recommended at any time for takeoff. Examination of the airframe and a teardown examination of the engine did not reveal any anomalies that would have prevented normal flight operations.
Probable cause
The inadvertent stall as result of the pilot's failure to retract the flaps from the fully extended position prior to takeoff. Factors were the gusting winds and the pilot's failure to follow the before takeoff checklist.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98FA189
- Event ID
- 20001211X09845
- Case number
- FTW98FA189
- 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: b22964e0c6a4f48818511315eff1b4bde45a73c8ce7567cc616c3518f11d3697; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:37:04.343Z.