ATL87LA109 · Cessna 150F
Cessna 150F · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Northeast Alabama Regional Airport (GAD) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL87LA109
- 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 150F
- 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
- N8960S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Northeast Alabama Regional Airport (GAD), Gadsden, ALTo 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
- Approach · VFR go-around
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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; Tree(s)
- 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 › Airspeed, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Pull-up, excessive
- Pilot in command › Stall, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PLT REPORTED THAT THE ACFT APPEARED TO BE 'HOT' ON FINAL APPROACH DUE TO A TAILWIND, WHILE LDG AT THE PRIVATE AIRSTRIP. HE INITIATED A GO-AROUND TO AVOID 50-60 FT TREES AT THE FAR END OF THE RWY AND MADE A CLIMBING RIGHT TURN. THE STALL WARNING SYSTEM ACTIVATED DURING THE CLIMBING TURN. THE AIRSTRIP OWNER WHO WITNESSED THE GO-AROUND REPORTED THAT THE TURN WAS STEEP AND NOSE HIGH, AND OCCURRED ABOUT HALF-WAY DOWN THE RWY. THE ACFT PITCHED NOSE-DOWN AFTER CLEARING SOME HIGH TREES TO THE SIDE OF THE RWY, AND DISAPPEARED FROM HIS SIGHT. THE ACFT LEFT WING SUBSEQUENTLY STRUCK A LARGE DEAD TREE IN A PASTURE AND THE ACFT FELL TO THE GROUND UPRIGHT. THE AIRSTRIP OWNER REPORTED THAT THE WINDS AT THE TIME WERE CALM. THE WIND 18 NM AWAY AT BHM WAS REPORTED TO BE FROM 310 DEGREES AT 4 KTS AT 1155 CDT.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL87LA109
- Event ID
- 20001213X30584
- Case number
- ATL87LA109
- 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: a098dc1746c1f9fd9abe7050c34228532a70262061ff1c0ba7018615cb84a87b; retrieved 2026-09-23T13:19:40.676Z.