ATL90LA098 · Cessna 150H
Fun Flight Air Tours Cessna 150H · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL90LA098
- 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
- 1 · 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 150H
- 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
- N22953
- Operator
- Fun Flight Air Tours
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo 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
- Maneuvering · turn to reverse direction
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Airspeed, not maintained
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of North Myrtle Beach, SC, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
DURING AN AERIAL BANNER TOW FLIGHT THE AIRPLANE STALLED AT LOW ALTITUDE. IT SUBSEQUENTLY IMPACTED THE OCEAN ADJACENT TO THE BEACH IN A STEEP NOSE DOWN ATTITUDE. PRIOR TO THE FLIGHT, ON THE SAME MORNING, THE PILOT HAD DISCUSSED WITH ANOTHER BANNER TOW PILOT HIS THEORY OF COMPLETING A COURSE REVERSAL. THE METHOD SUGGESTED INVOLVED A STEEP TURN AT A SPEED THAT WAS NEAR THE STALL SPEED OF THE AIRPLANE. THE SAME PILOT WAS TRAILING THE AIRPLANE WHEN THE ACCIDENT OCCURRED. HE REPORTED THAT THE WINGS ROCKED SEVERAL TIMES BEFORE A TURN WAS INITIATED, DURING WHICH THE STALL OCCURRED. ALSO, HE DID NOT OBSERVE ANY SPEED INCREASE BEFORE THE TURN BEGAN.
Probable cause
THE PILOT'S IMPROPER COURSE REVERSAL PROCEDURE WHICH RESULTED IN A STALL AT A LOW ALTITUDE PRECLUDING A RECOVERY BEFORE WATER IMPACT.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL90LA098
- Event ID
- 20001212X22856
- Case number
- ATL90LA098
- 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: aff6ebea54858342ca2857f598c3d919d18c18c922c785a2ab408ee1f8361601; retrieved 2026-09-21T02:46:59.044Z.