MIA94FA034 · Cessna 150J
Cessna 150J · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Boca Raton Airport (BCT) to Palm Beach County Park Airport (LNA)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA94FA034
- 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 150J
- 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
- N60517
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Boca Raton Airport (BCT), BOCA ROTAN, FLTo Palm Beach County Park Airport (LNA), Lantana, FL
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- 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 › Altitude, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Spatial disorientation
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot leveled off at 500 feet agl, and was flying parallel to the shoreline at night. The pilot described the weather conditions as very dark, with no natural horizon, and the only visible light was located on the shoreline. The passenger stated, look how beautiful it is over there. The pilot looked at the shoreline, and felt something was wrong. The buildings looked closer than they should have been. He looked at the altimeter and noticed the airplane was descending through 200 feet. He pulled back on the control yoke and made a left turn. The airplane did not appear to climb. The pilot turned to the right and back to the left. The next thing he remembered was being under water trying to get to the surface.
Probable cause
The pilot-in-command's failure to maintain altitude while maneuvering. This resulted in the pilot becoming spatially disoriented, and subsequent in-flight collision with the ocean. Contributing to the accident was the dark night with no visible horizon.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA94FA034
- Event ID
- 20001211X13889
- Case number
- MIA94FA034
- 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 1993-12-04.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 08c01e48940c9d90002124c07c90eaecd80e94c913243f8ab05bbbc6ba8e99d3; retrieved 2026-09-21T00:17:47.699Z.