SEA00LA070 · Cessna 150M
Cessna 150M · Accident: in flight collision with object en route
From Renton Municipal Airport (RNT) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA00LA070
- 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
- N9301U
- Operator
- Archer, Thomas, E. · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Renton Municipal Airport (RNT), Renton, WATo 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
- En route · climb to 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 collision with object
- 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
- Wire, transmission
- 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 › Procedures/directives, not followed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot, accompanied by a passenger, was conducting a low approach at full flaps (40 degrees) in the Cessna 150M to a minimum altitude of approximately five feet AGL above the runway. Following the go-around, he added full power but left the flaps fully extended. The aircraft failed to climb, and approaching high tension power lines across his flight path he made a gradual right turn, ultimately colliding with a second set of power lines perpendicular to his flight path and approximately 55 feet above ground. The Pilot's Operating Handbook (POH) for the aircraft discussed flap settings for takeoff and specifically stated 'flap deflections greater than 10 degrees are not approved for takeoff.' Additionally, the POH also discussed balked landing procedures stating 'in a balked landing (go-around) climb, the wing flap setting should be reduced to 20 degrees immediately after full power is applied. The POH balked landing checklist included a requirement to retract the flaps to '20 DEGREES.' Post-crash examination revealed that the flaps were fully extended.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to follow aircraft operating procedures by not raising the flaps during the go-around maneuver. Contributing factors were the pilot's failure to adhere to the balked landing checklist (FLAPS to 20) resulting in degraded climb performance, and the power lines in his flight path.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA00LA070
- Event ID
- 20001212X20921
- Case number
- SEA00LA070
- 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: 1b3205ea4e0c5862c7f6dcfa2292345c6140dbdb90611d0b1d79cfeebca86702; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:15:53.794Z.