DEN89FA162 · Cessna 150K
Cessna 150K · Accident: in flight encounter with weather while maneuvering
From Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (BJC) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN89FA162
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Cessna 150K
- 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
- N6342G
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (BJC), Broomfield, COTo 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
- 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
- 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
- Flight into known adverse weather
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Supervision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE INSTRUCTOR PLT (CFI) HAD NOT FLOWN A CESSNA 150K BEFORE & WAS ON HIS 1ST INSTRUCTIONAL FLT AFTER RECEIPT OF HIS CFI CERTIFICATE. THE STUDENT PLT HAD 9 HRS OF DUAL FLT TIME. THEY DEPD JEFFCO ARPT (BJC) AT 1855 MDT. AT 1900 MDT, THE BJC WX WAS IN PART: 12,000' SCT, 14,000' BKN, VIS 70 MI, WND 300 DEG AT 14 GSTG 33 KTS, TEMP 97 DEG, VIRGA IN ALL QUADS & TSTM ACTIVITY IN THE AREA. AFTER DEPG BJC, THE ACFT WAS SEEN ON AN APPARENT APCH TO A LARGE EMPTY PARKING LOT; THE APCH WAS THEN ABORTED. NO ENG PROBLEM WAS NOTED BY WITNESSES; THEY LAST SAW THE ACFT AS IT PASSED OVER THE CREST OF A HILL, DSCNDG ON A NORTHERLY HDG. IT CRASHED BYD THE CREST ON DSCNDG TRRN & WAS EXTENSIVELY DMGD. NO PREIMPACT PART FAILURE OR MALFUNCTION OF THE ACFT OR ENG WAS FOUND. THERE WAS EVIDENCE THE ACFT HAD ENCTRD MICROBURST ACTIVITY. APRX 15 MI SE AT STAPLETON INTL ARPT, MICROBURST ACTIVITY WAS RECORDED ON THE LOW LVL WND SHEAR ALERT (LLWAS) SYS. DENSITY ALTITUDE WAS ABOUT 9500'.
Probable cause
INADEQUATE SUPERVISION BY THE INSTRUCTOR PILOT (CFI) AND FLIGHT IN KNOWN ADVERSE WEATHER CONDITIONS. FACTORS RELATED TO THE ACCIDENT WERE: INADEQUATE PREFLIGHT PLANNING/PREPARATION BY THE CFI, HIS LACK OF EXPERIENCE IN THE TYPE OF OPERATION, AND THE WEATHER CONDITIONS.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN89FA162
- Event ID
- 20001213X28792
- Case number
- DEN89FA162
- 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 1989-07-09.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 944c351dc9ee62818d9fbb4e160d8be8dbd532acfacc243779d3a5e00f7cb7c7; retrieved 2026-09-21T03:14:41.507Z.