SEA99LA173 · Cessna 150M
Cessna 150M · Accident: in flight collision with object on approach
From WA10 to WA10
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA99LA173
- 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
- N704XA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From WA10To WA10
- 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
- In flight collision with object
- 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 › Airspeed, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Planned approach, misjudged
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that while on a long final approach with sun glare in his eyes, he mistook the runway number for the displaced threshold. On short final, the pilot realized that he was low and slow, and the addition of power near the end of the runway was insufficient to maintain flight. During the go-around maneuver, the tail section of the aircraft contacted the airport boundary fence. The aircraft pitched down and subsequently collided with the ground in a nose-down attitude. The pilot reported that there was no mechanical failure or malfunction with the aircraft at the time of the accident. The Airport/Facility Directory indicates that the threshold is displaced 413 feet.
Probable cause
A misjudged approach and inadequate airspeed. Sunglare, a delayed decision to go-around, and not maintaining clearance from a fence were factors.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA99LA173
- Event ID
- 20001212X19892
- Case number
- SEA99LA173
- 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: 2fe3f4e3dada76b67b8d6d563b2ada50ff997dcc11f3c46f4c1298f100095f1f; retrieved 2026-09-22T14:03:20.823Z.