CHI98LA158 · Cessna 150
Cessna 150 · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From O5C to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI98LA158
- 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 150
- 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
- N2916J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From O5CTo 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Airspeed, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Stall, encountered
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that was taking off on runway 08 with 20-degrees of flaps and when he was approximately 100' above the runway he released the banner hook out the pilot's window. The pilot stated that shortly after he dropped the hook the aircraft began to sink while the aircraft was in a left turn. The pilot stated that, 'the nose came down and the plane would not fly level.' In an oral statement to the Griffith police, the pilot stated that the aircraft was, 'Mushing, and would not fly.' The pilot stated in his written statement that the aircraft hit the ground nose first, flipped over and came to rest in an inverted position. A witness to the accident stated that the pilot did not utilize all of the available runway for the takeoff and was 'Surprised' with how little runway the aircraft used to become airborne. The witness stated that he saw the aircraft pitch-up before the aircraft descended towards the ground. The witness stated that the hook had freely fallen from the aircraft and that there was no evidence of the hook contacting the ground or surrounding terrain. In a post accident investigation of the aircraft, no anomalies were found with the aircraft controls or engine.
Probable cause
The aircraft's speed not maintained by the pilot, which resulted in the aircraft stalling in close proximity to the ground.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI98LA158
- Event ID
- 20001211X10017
- Case number
- CHI98LA158
- 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: 4501f11868a5f771c4d3b6e63e70facf66fa504dc31dc0a6620b3990ff1d2edc; retrieved 2026-09-22T17:45:59.277Z.