NYC89LA161 · Cessna 150L
Gull Aviation Cessna 150L · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water during takeoff
From N88 · Doylestown, PA to N63 · Sussex, NJ
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC89LA161
- 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 150L
- 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
- N10659
- Operator
- Gull Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From N88 · Doylestown, PATo N63 · Sussex, NJ
- 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
- Takeoff · rejected takeoff
- 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
- 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 › Aborted takeoff, delayed
- Pilot in command › Aircraft preflight, improper
- Pilot in command › Airspeed, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PLT RPRTD THAT DRG TAKEOFF, THE ACFT REACHED AN ALTITUDE OF ABOUT 50 TO 75 FT, WHEN HE NOTICED THE AIRSPEED WAS SLOWLY DROPPING. HE DID NOT BELIEVE THE ACFT WOULD CLEAR TREES BEYOND THE END OF THE RWY, SO HE ELECTED TO ABORT THE TAKEOFF. SUBSEQUENTLY, THE ACFT TOUCHED DOWN, NOSEWHEEL FIRST, BETWEEN THE END OF THE RWY & THE TREES, THEN IT NOSED OVER. RPRTDLY, THE FLAPS WERE IN A FULL DOWN POSITION.
Probable cause
IMPROPER PREFLIGHT PREPARATION BY THE PILOT BY TAKING OFF WITH THE FLAPS EXTENDED, WHICH RESULTED IN AN INADEQUATE RATE OF CLIMB TO CLEAR OBSTRUCTIONS BEYOND THE END OF THE RUNWAY, AND THE PILOT'S DELAY IN ABORTING THE TAKEOFF AND HIS FAILURE IN MAINTAINING AIRSPEED, WHICH REDUCED HIS ABILITY TO FLARE THE AIRCRAFT. THE HIGH OBSTRUCTIONS (TREES) NEAR THE END OF THE RUNWAY WERE CONSIDERED TO BE A FACTOR.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC89LA161
- Event ID
- 20001213X28959
- Case number
- NYC89LA161
- 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: b90f8ecc93dcd64c330c19a6d14535f8b41eeb13e182bddd5d94823820c219b5; retrieved 2026-09-21T15:52:52.510Z.