SEA98LA093 · Cessna 150
Cessna 150 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water on approach
From UNKNOWN to UNKNOWN
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA98LA093
- 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
- 1 · 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
- N7759E
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From UNKNOWNTo UNKNOWN
- 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
- Approach · VFR go-around
- 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 collision with terrain/water
- 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 › Altitude/clearance, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Witnesses reported the airplane made an approach to a small private grass airstrip adjacent to the crash site in an easterly direction, then began a go-around late in the approach (they reported the aircraft was below the tops of power poles in the area at this point, at an estimated height between 30 and 50 feet above ground level). The one-way airstrip, with landings to the east and takeoffs to the west, is 800 feet long and has trees at both ends and on both sides. The witnesses reported that during the attempted go-around, the airplane began a right turn, and that in this turn the airplane's right wingtip dragged the ground and the airplane crashed into a field. On-scene investigators found no evidence of preimpact mechanical malfunction, sabotage or tampering, preimpact airframe structural failure, or fire. The pilot's third-class FAA medical certificate was expired; however, autopsy and toxicology tests did not indicate that medical factors were involved.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain adequate altitude and/or clearance from terrain during a go-around attempt. Factors included a short landing area and trees in the landing area.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA98LA093
- Event ID
- 20001211X10424
- Case number
- SEA98LA093
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1998-06-10.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 58128012b14611e2c20a59bd01834a4993664f183cd7ad0a627bebcea06ec763; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:33:01.036Z.