MIA00FA217 · Cessna 150M
Cessna 150M · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From UNKNOWN to Holly Springs Marshall County Airport (M41)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA00FA217
- 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
- 2 · 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
- N9249U
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From UNKNOWNTo Holly Springs Marshall County Airport (M41), Holly Springs, MS
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Impairment(drugs)
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to FAA Memphis Air Route Traffic Control transcripts, the airplane radioed Approach Control radar at 1748 central daylight time requesting VFR flight following to the Holly Springs Airport. After identifying the flight, the controller assigned the flight a different frequency, but they did not hear from N9429U again. There were no witnesses to the crash. Air Force Rescue Coordination Center, Langley, picked up ELT transmissions south of the Holly Springs Airport at 2001 and alerted Mississippi Civil Air Patrol at 0300. The aircraft wreckage was located at 0745 on July 15, 2000. Aircraft, engine and all associated components revealed no signs of malfunction or failure. Proper fuel and lubrication were aboard the aircraft at the crash site. Seventy-nine pounds of marijuana and drug paraphernalia were found in the wreckage. The FAA toxicological examination of the pilot revealed he had recently used three different illegal recreational drugs, and was impaired by the effects of the levels of methamphetamine and the MDMA found.
Probable cause
The failure of the pilot to maintain control while maneuvering the aircraft due to impairment as a result of use of illegal drugs, and the subsequent collision with the terrain during an uncontrolled descent.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA00FA217
- Event ID
- 20001212X21531
- Case number
- MIA00FA217
- 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: d2ac237101a4ea913bb485e6e42d5e3122f3312dc8b379b58836bebee133b0dc; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:02:44.390Z.