DEN00LA125 · Cessna 150M
Cessna 150M · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Montrose Regional Airport (MTJ) to Blanding Municipal Airport (BDG)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN00LA125
- 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
- N4723
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Montrose Regional Airport (MTJ)To Blanding Municipal Airport (BDG), Blanding, UT
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- 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
- Stall/mush
- 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 › Stall/mush, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot made a full power check of the engine and adjusted the mixture prior to takeoff. Not wanting to overheat the cylinders during climbout, he enriched the mixture 'a little.' The pilot said after lifting off, 'it became apparent at around 250 feet that the power was deteriorating and I leaned the mixture a little and made a shallow rudder turn to the right, hoping to pick up speed and get a gradual climb, when the engine quit and the plane mushed to the ground, stalled, and crashed.' Engine examination disclosed no evidence of preimpact failure or malfunction. When questioned by an FAA inspector at the hospital, the pilot said there was 'nothing wrong with the engine,' and that all engine instruments appeared to be normal during the takeoff and climb. He admitted he had not performed weight and balance calculations, nor had he consulted the Cessna 150 PILOT'S OPERATING HANDBOOK for high altitude performance data. It was computed the airplane was 32.8 pounds over maximum gross weight (1,600 pounds), and the density altitude was 7,844 feet msl. The pilot also admitted that 'a sleepless night clouded [his] judgment.'
Probable cause
An inadvertent stall/mush. Factors were high density altitude, weight and balance exceeded, and pilot fatigue.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN00LA125
- Event ID
- 20001212X21435
- Case number
- DEN00LA125
- 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: 1b5641ada12cffe48bb41e9c00a2bbed6e177003e97880fdc775e1bd303ed46c; retrieved 2026-09-21T10:35:16.780Z.