NYC02LA114 · Cessna 150K
Cessna 150K · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Seaman, OH (no airport) to No airport
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC02LA114
- 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
- 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 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
- N6319G
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Seaman, OH (no airport)To No airport
- 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 pattern base
- 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/mush
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot departed from a private airstrip on his property for a local flight. After becoming airborne, and passing through about 400 feet, he smelled and observed smoke coming from under the instrument panel. He immediately returned, and overflew the departure airstrip. The pilot then maneuvered the airplane to land in the same direction he departed. As the airplane turned final, it entered an uncontrolled descent and turned left. The pilot reported that he was unable to affect the descent or heading with the use of flight controls. The airplane impacted the ground in a nose low attitude, and the nose landing gear fork was bent aft and to the right. The fuselage was buckled on the left side and bent to the left. There was no evidence of burnt wires. However, oil leakage from the push rods onto the engine muffler was found. Nothing was found that would have contributed to a power loss. The pilot's total flight experience was 250 hours, with 30 hours in make and model, and 1 hour in the preceding 90 days.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain airspeed during a precautionary landing, which resulted in an inadvertent stall/mush, and uncontrolled descent to the ground. A factor was the pilots' lack of recent experience.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC02LA114
- Event ID
- 20020625X00968
- Case number
- NYC02LA114
- 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, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2002-06-17.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 54aa4d9f3ef02d957de5cfe1d39fc6beaf9b70abb114568647e0077aae798374; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:41:46.364Z.