DEN88LA095 · Cessna 150M
Cessna 150M · Accident: forced landing en route
From Southeast Colorado Regional Airport (LAA) to Montrose Regional Airport (MTJ)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN88LA095
- 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
- N714BK
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Southeast Colorado Regional Airport (LAA), Lamar, COTo Montrose Regional Airport (MTJ), Montrose, CO
- 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
- En route · climb to cruise
- 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
- Forced landing
- 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 › In-flight planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PLT WAS FERRYING HIS ACFT FROM BURLINGTON, NC TO KELSO, WA. AFTER REFUELING HIS ACFT TO CAPACITY (26 GAL.), HE STAYED OVERNIGHT IN LAMAR, CO. HE DEPARTED LAMAR THE NEXT MORNING AT 0800. HE PASSED PUEBLO, CO AT 7500 FT., AND OBTAINED A WX BRIEFING FROM THE COLORADO SPRINGS FSS. HE CROSSED SALIDA, CO AT 9700 FT. AND CONTINUED TOWARDS MONARCH PASS. THE PLT SAID HE REALIZED THE ACFT WOULD NOT CLEAR MONARCH PASS (ELEVATION 11,312 FT. MSL) AND HE WAS UNABLE TO TURN AROUND. THE PLT ELECTED TO LAND IN AN OPEN, SNOW-COVERED FIELD AT THE 10,400 FT LEVEL, NEAR THE SUMMIT OF MONARCH PASS, ABOUT 2 MI SW OF GARFIELD, CO. ON TOUCHDOWN, THE ACFT OVERTURNED IN THE DEEP SNOW. STRAIGHT LINE DISTANCE FROM LAMAR, CO TO THE CRASH SITE IS APRX 175 SM. COMPUTED DENSITY ALTITUDE AT THE CRASH SITE WAS APRX 10,700 FT MSL.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN88LA095
- Event ID
- 20001213X25456
- Case number
- DEN88LA095
- 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: 085811ba56fdad0b445de573ada50a7becaab59e2d5caf4320113ccefec8308b; retrieved 2026-09-23T10:33:30.223Z.