FTW98LA285 · Cessna 150G
Cessna 150G · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Benson Airstrip (2XS8) to Del Rio International Airport (DRT)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98LA285
- 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 150G
- 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
- N8445J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Benson Airstrip (2XS8)To Del Rio International Airport (DRT), Del Rio, TX
- 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 › Flaps, improper use of
- Pilot in command › Stall, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane impacted the ground in an uncontrolled descent following an inadvertent stall by the 600-hour commercial pilot during the initial takeoff climb from the 3,300 foot paved runway. Density altitude was 3,500 feet. The takeoff flap setting was at least 10 degrees of flaps, although the Cessna 150 owner's manual recommends the use of 10 degrees flaps only for takeoff from soft or rough fields with no obstacles ahead. According to the pilot-rated passenger, during the takeoff roll, the pilot 'kept the nose wheel at a high angle,' and the airplane 'lumbered' off the ground. After completing a left turn to avoid obstacles, the pilot added more flaps, and the airplane stalled and impacted the ground in a nose down attitude. Although the pilot reported a gradual loss of engine power, the passenger did not, and an examination of the engine revealed no evidence of any mechanical discrepancies. In the 90 days before the accident, the pilot had flown 64 hours; however, 60 of these hours were in multi-engine airplanes, and only 2 hours were in a Cessna 150.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper use of the flaps which resulted in an inadvertent stall during the initial takeoff climb. Factors were his lack of recent experience in the make and model of airplane and the high density altitude.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98LA285
- Event ID
- 20001211X10326
- Case number
- FTW98LA285
- 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: c6bc0423562bd224a42b96b070692c3f39dc4d5951bf99b951bc9d23c07e2efa; retrieved 2026-09-21T11:26:57.494Z.