LAX99LA198 · Cessna 150L
Cessna 150L · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Paso Robles Municipal Airport (PRB) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX99LA198
- 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 150L
- 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
- N1371Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Paso Robles Municipal Airport (PRB)To 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Unsuitable terrain or takeoff/landing/taxi area, selected
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After reaching pattern altitude, the pilot reported that he experienced turbulence and difficulty maintaining his flight path. On final he reported having 'too much airspeed' and trouble 'lining up with the runway' and started a go-around. A witness said that as the aircraft reached midfield it was still about 50 feet agl and was continuously rolling right and left. Unable to regain directional control the pilot decided to make a self described hard landing off the runway surface. The aircraft landed off the runway, encountered a gully, nosed over, and came to rest on its back. An inspection showed the flight control linkages were connected and there was no binding. The cables were routed around their associated pulleys and all pins and keepers were in place. The pilot received his private pilot certificate on May 12, 1947 and had accrued a total flight time of 390 hours. He had last completed a flight review on May 30, 1989. He had averaged about 1.3 flight hours per month since his last flight review. Airborne witness reported that winds were variable at 4 knots when the accident occurred and no unusual atmospheric phenomena were present.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control and the resulting intentional off-airport landing. Inadequate recurrent training and recent flight experience were factors in this accident.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX99LA198
- Event ID
- 20001212X18826
- Case number
- LAX99LA198
- 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: 9e852798728143c1b8cf05668fcb3ad46eac60a59ef4ac704dfab8445c36cfb9; retrieved 2026-09-22T15:04:16.200Z.