FTW98LA202 · Cessna 150M
Cessna 150M · Accident: in flight encounter with weather during initial climb
From Q24 to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98LA202
- 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 150M
- 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
- N459U
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Q24To 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
- In flight encounter with weather
- 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
- Compensation for wind conditions › Inadequate
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Weather evaluation, inaccurate
- Weather condition › Downdraft
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor (CFI) and student pilot reported that during an instructional flight, the airplane encountered a severe downdraft that it was unable to out climb, while in the traffic pattern. This occurred after the flight departed from runway 17 to practice takeoffs and landings in the traffic pattern. The CFI reported that after turning crosswind, while the engine was still operating at full takeoff power, the airplane encountered a severe downdraft, which resulted in a rate of descent that exceeded 1,000 feet per minute. The CFI turned the airplane away from high tension power lines as he maneuvered the airplane towards a plowed field to the east-southeast of the airport. The CFI reduced power before the airplane impacted the ground in a landing attitude with the flaps retracted. The operator stated that virga and dust devils were observed in all quadrants near the time of the accident. An FAA inspector also observed signs of downdrafts and virga while en route to the accident site. On a previous flight, the operator experienced 'strong up and downdrafts due to the highly unstable weather pattern.' The density altitude was calculated by the investigator-in-charge to be 5,600 feet.
Probable cause
the pilot's inaccurate weather evaluation, subsequent encounter with a severe downdraft, and failure (or inability) to compensate for the wind (downdraft) condition. The high density altitude was a related factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98LA202
- Event ID
- 20001211X10059
- Case number
- FTW98LA202
- 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: a52ae3223a958c89cafa01892f4df8a0a9148fd762183e32b20906f6af54aba6; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:51:36.426Z.