SEA99LA058 · Cessna 150G
Cessna 150G · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Lebanon State Airport (S30) to Davis Airport (6S4)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA99LA058
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna 150G
- 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
- N3381J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lebanon State Airport (S30), Lebanon, ORTo Davis Airport (6S4), GATES, OR
- 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
- In flight encounter with weather
- 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
- Visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC)
- 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 › VFR flight into imc, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot, who was not instrument-rated, reported that he obtained his preflight weather information from The Weather Channel on television. He was subsequently unable to land at his destination due to high crosswind conditions associated with a cold frontal passage, and attempted to return to his departure airport. While en route back to the departure airport, the pilot encountered a snowstorm, entered instrument meteorological conditions, and became lost. He called for emergency assistance on several frequencies and was finally assisted in contacting ATC by another aircraft. However, before ATC could vector him to a suitable airport, the airplane iced up and eventually lost engine power (the pilot reported he thought he was out of fuel at this time, which was approximately 4 hours after the pilot's reported takeoff time.) A few seconds prior to the loss of power, the pilot had also turned carburetor heat off. The airplane subsequently crashed onto a mountainside. The airplane's emergency locator transmitter signal aided search and rescue forces in locating the downed aircraft, and the seriously injured pilot was rescued approximately 17 hours after the crash.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadvertent visual flight rules flight into instrument meteorological conditions, eventually resulting in a non-mechanical loss of engine power. Factors were: the pilot's inadequate preflight planning and preparation; a snowstorm with icing conditions; the pilot becoming lost; and mountainous terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA99LA058
- Event ID
- 20001212X18886
- Case number
- SEA99LA058
- 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 1999-05-07.
- API snapshot SHA-256: c9662b47cdd4f617aea612e52455e0aa1549de10eec18527dfea162ca983d86d; retrieved 2026-09-21T11:06:24.585Z.