FTW99FA049 · Cessna 150H
Cessna 150H · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water during landing
From St Tammany Parish Hospital Heliport (LA24) to Unicorn Airport (LA26)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW99FA049
- 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 150H
- 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
- N22038
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From St Tammany Parish Hospital Heliport (LA24), Leesville, LATo Unicorn Airport (LA26)
- 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
- Landing
- 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 › Unsafe/hazardous condition, not identified
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During landing on a runway that was undergoing reconstruction, the airplane impacted a dirt bank and nosed over. There was a Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) in effect stating that the airport was closed. When the private pilot received a weather briefing for the cross-country flight, he was not given the NOTAM, since he did not tell the briefer he intended to pass over, or stop at the airport. The accident occurred at dusk, 24 minutes after sunset. The runway lights and the airport's rotating beacon were turned off, and the runway threshold was marked with an 'X'. Construction workers had removed the old asphalt runway surface and dumped truckloads of dirt along the runway centerline. A witness observed the airplane on a 'normal landing approach' to runway 22. The witness continued to watch the airplane until it disappeared from view behind a tree line. He then saw the airplane's 'tail section go up in the air.' The witness drove to the airport and found the airplane lying inverted on top of a dirt bank. Examination of the airframe and engine revealed no evidence of any pre-impact mechanical discrepancies that would have prevented normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to visually identify the hazardous condition of the runway. Factors were the dusk light condition and the pilot's failure to obtain NOTAMs.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW99FA049
- Event ID
- 20001211X11554
- Case number
- FTW99FA049
- 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: 85191fabcd214c29c5ca8e6ab141e46f46468f7c7954705bc24e2b27c1085f66; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:18:13.518Z.