NYC00LA189 · Cessna 150
Cessna 150 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water during an uncontrolled descent
From Delaware Coastal Airport (GED) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC00LA189
- 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 150
- 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
- N8362M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Delaware Coastal Airport (GED), Georgetown, DETo 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
- Uncontrolled descent
- 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 terrain/water
- 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 › Altitude/clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Remedial action, delayed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot performed a descent to an altitude of 50 feet to release a banner, which the airplane was towing. As the pilot applied power to go-around, the airplane's nose gear came in contact with the ground. The airplane bounced 15-20 feet into the air, the pilot released the banner, and the airplane continued to climb. A subsequent landing was attempted and the pilot noticed the throttle was stuck in the 3/4 open position. The mixture was reduced and the magnetos were turned off to land the airplane without power. During the landing flare, the nose of the airplane came in contact with the ground, because the nose gear had collapsed. Examination of the airplane by a Federal Aviation Administration inspector revealed no pre-impact malfunctions of the airplane or engine.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain altitude/clearance and delayed power application while attempting to release a banner from the airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC00LA189
- Event ID
- 20001212X21575
- Case number
- NYC00LA189
- 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: 83fe7dc77452aadf78f188d474fa636116932c3da53c0423e508a97cc21f8187; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:43:31.538Z.