CHI02FA006 · Cessna 150L
Cessna 150L · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Union, IL to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI02FA006
- 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
- 1 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- 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
- N6609G
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Union, ILTo 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 · turn to reverse direction
- 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
- 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 › Airspeed, not maintained
- Stall › Inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was observed flying toward the west. One witness said, "The plane was low exceptionally low." The witness said they watched the airplane initiate a turn to the north. Another witness said, "It [the airplane] was low and slow and the turn was tight. As he looked like he was going to complete the turn, he went straight down." The witness said the airplane disappeared into the cornfield. The witness said she then saw dust and debris coming up from the field. Both witnesses estimated the airplane to be approximately 200 to 300 feet above the ground when it began to turn. An examination of the airplane wreckage revealed no anomalies. FAA toxicology revealed concentrations of PROPOXYPHENE and NORPROPOXYPHENE present in urine, NORPROPOXYPHENE and TRAMADOL (1.195 ug/mL, ug/g) detected in blood, and TRAMADOL detected in liver. The pilot's daughter said that the month before the accident, the pilot was admitted to the hospital, having suffered congestive heart failure. She said in the months prior to the accident, the pilot had become forgetful. The pilot's primary physician saw the pilot the day before the accident to follow up on a pulmonary embolism. The pilot's pulmonary doctor revealed that he had last seen the pilot 10 days before the accident for deep vein thrombosis, pulmonary embolism, and chronic back pain. The pulmonary doctor said the pilot was taking several medication to include ZANTAC for gastric ulcers, TRAMADOL for pain, LASIX for edema, THEOPHYLIN for asthma, emphysema, or can be prescribed for bronchitis, COUMADIN a blood thinner, PEPCID for ulcers, and NEUROTIN for pain or seizures.
Probable cause
The pilot not maintaining appropriate airspeed which resulted in an inadvertent stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI02FA006
- Event ID
- 20011022X02129
- Case number
- CHI02FA006
- 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: 66823fe61fb9ad887cc7717ede60abc2aa8a6f451e3ead9780d2f84132ad5f8a; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:19:31.243Z.