NYC98FA161 · Cessna 150M
Charis Air Cessna 150M · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Westfield-Barnes Regional Airport (BAF) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC98FA161
- 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 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
- N704ZY
- Operator
- Charis Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Westfield-Barnes Regional Airport (BAF), Westfield, MATo 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
- En route · cruise
- 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; Tree(s)
- 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 › Airspeed, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Diverted attention
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Worthington, MA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot was operating on a local aerial photography flight with a photographer. Witnesses observed the airplane make two circles over the area, with the second pass lower than the first pass. One witness heard the engine sputter followed by an impact, while two other witnesses said the engine was running until impact. Onsite investigation revealed the airplane had slid down a tree and impacted on its left side. The throttle and mixture were found full forward with the carburetor heat knob partially extended. Some of the spark plugs were covered with soot. Fuel was found in the wing tanks, the fuel line leading to the carburetor, and the inside the carburetor. Pieces of cut wood more than 4 inches across was found near the base of the tree that the airplane slid down. The airplane was removed and the engine ran with no hesitation observed.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain airspeed due to diverted attention.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC98FA161
- Event ID
- 20001211X10932
- Case number
- NYC98FA161
- 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: 0cc6226dd9307e5182ca676fec485b9c14688feb30ea80d2cde3c5641fe965f1; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:28:44.613Z.