SEA99LA086 · Cessna 150M
Alpha Aviation Cessna 150M · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Bellingham International Airport (BLI) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA99LA086
- 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 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
- N9349U
- Operator
- Alpha Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bellingham International Airport (BLI)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 go-around
- 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(cfi) › Compensation for wind conditions, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor reported that while on final approach and approximately 30 feet above the runway, with the student pilot at the controls, a gust of wind pushed the airplane to the right side of the runway edge. The flight instructor took over control of the airplane and initiated a go-around, when another gust of wind hit the airplane. The right wing tipped up and the left wing contacted the ground. The right wing then dipped down and also contacted the ground. The airplane then nosed down and came to rest next to the runway. The flight instructor reported that later he remembered that while on final approach, the wind sock on the south end of the runway was indicating the wind from 170 degrees to 190 degrees, with a wind velocity of 18 knots, gusting to 25 knots. The wind sock on the approach end however, was limp.
Probable cause
Compensation for wind conditions was inadequate. Gusting wind conditions was a factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA99LA086
- Event ID
- 20001212X19116
- Case number
- SEA99LA086
- 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: d93e0081fc1f089424aba61f63f1a98bb99c4f6574d1cb5267f4ef01d9323757; retrieved 2026-09-22T14:50:00.009Z.