MKC89FA102 · Cessna 150H
Cessna 150H · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Wiley Post Airport (PWA) to Hobart Regional Airport (HBR)
Event
- NTSB case
- MKC89FA102
- 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
- Instrument 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
- N22875
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wiley Post Airport (PWA), Oklahoma City, OKTo Hobart Regional Airport (HBR), Hobart, OK
- 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 · 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
- In flight encounter with weather
- 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
- Visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC)
- 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 › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PLT & PAX HAD FLOWN FROM HOBART TO OKLAHOMA CITY EARLIER IN THE DAY. AT APRX 2115 CDT, THE PLT TOOK OFF ON THE RETURN FLT WITHOUT FILING A FLT PLAN OR RCVG AN FAA WX BRIEFING. BY THAT TIME, WX HAD DIMINISHED ALONG THE ROUTE OF FLT, WHICH WAS TO THE WSW OF OKLAHOMA CITY. SUBSEQUENTLY, THE ACFT IMPACTED ON RISING TERRAIN, WHILE IN ABOUT A 30 DEG, RIGHT BANK ATTITUDE ON A HDG OF 130 DEG. THE ACFT WAS EXTENSIVELY DAMAGED FROM IMPACT & FIRE. NO PREIMPACT FAILURE OF THE FLIGHT CONTROLS OR ENG WAS FOUND. ACCORDING TO A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIAL, THERE WAS THUNDERSTORM ACTIVITY WITH HEAVY RAIN & REDUCED VISIBILITY IN THE AREA OF THE ACDNT. THE PLT'S LAST MED CERT WAS DATED 3/30/84. A TOXICOLOGY CHECK OF THE PLT'S BLOOD SHOWED THE PRESENCE OF ETHANOL; HOWEVER, THE TOXICOLOGIST NOTED THAT ETHANOL PRODUCTION MAY HAVE OCCURRED FROM TISSUE DECOMPOSITION OR BACTERIAL CONTAMINATION. THE 2155 CDT WX AT LAWTON, OK, WAS IN PART: 300' OBSCURED, VIS 7 MI.
Probable cause
CONTINUED VFR FLIGHT BY THE PILOT INTO INSTRUMENT METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS, WHICH RESULTED IN SUBSEQUENT COLLISION WITH RISING/HILLY TERRAIN. RELATED FACTORS WERE: INADEQUATE PREFLIGHT PLANNING/PREPARATION BY THE PILOT, DARK NIGHT, ADVERSE WEATHER CONDITIONS, AND RISING/HILLY TERRAIN.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MKC89FA102
- Event ID
- 20001213X28392
- Case number
- MKC89FA102
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1989-05-04.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 20d09342d2994e638145389bb978dcb070e262b8f1c18547c2827aae4e379762; retrieved 2026-09-21T03:20:12.510Z.