ATL88LA140 · Cessna 152
E&l Aircraft Cessna 152 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water during initial climb
From 01I to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL88LA140
- 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 152
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 152
- 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
- N5089P
- Operator
- E&l Aircraft
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 01ITo 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
- 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
- In flight collision with terrain/water
- 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(cfi) › Stall/mush, inadvertent
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Weather evaluation, poor
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Wrong runway, selected
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE CFI ATTEMPTED TO DEMONSTRATE A SHORT-FIELD TAKEOFF TO HIS STUDENT, WITH A TAILWIND. HE REPORTED BELIEVING AT THE TIME THAT A LIGHT CROSS-WIND/QUARTERING TAILWIND WAS BLOWING. HE ELECTED TO DEPART FROM RWY 27, BECAUSE RWY 09 HAD UTILITY WIRES AT THE DEPARTURE END AND A SLIGHT UPHILL GRADIENT. DURING THE T/O ROLL, THE AIRPLANE 'LIFTED OFF SLIGHTLY 1-2 TIMES' AND HE HELD THE AIRPLANE ON THE GRASS RWY TO INCREASE ACCELERATION. AFTER ROTATION, THE AIRPLANE CLIMBED TO ABOUT 15-20 FT AGL, AND BEGAN TO SETTLE BACK TO THE GROUND. THE NOSEWHEEL IMPACTED A SMALL DITCH AND THE AIRPLANE NOSED OVER. THE ARPT MGR REPORTED THAT A 15 KT WIND WAS BLOWING FROM THE EAST WHEN THE ACCIDENT OCCURRED. A WX REPORTING STATION ABOUT 11 NM AWAY REPORTED WINDS FROM THE EAST AT 10 KTS, SHORTLY AFTER THE ACCIDENT OCCURRED. BASED ON PERFORMANCE DATA IN THE CESSNA 152 INFORMATION MANUAL, THE AIRPLANE WAS THEORETICALLY CAPABLE OF A SUCCESSFUL TAKEOFF.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL88LA140
- Event ID
- 20001213X25395
- Case number
- ATL88LA140
- 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: d3bbee8289f74d802a1bda1a3e5eb1f1e9457ab10cc4f9663fd50d5a26648c5c; retrieved 2026-09-23T10:34:03.302Z.