ATL02FA143 · Cessna 150G
Cessna 150G · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From 4R4 · Fairhope, AL to Tuscaloosa National Airport (TCL)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL02FA143
- 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
- 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 150G
- 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
- N3400J
- Operator
- Steven H. Pearson · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 4R4 · Fairhope, ALTo Tuscaloosa National Airport (TCL), Tuscaloosa, AL
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A witness stated that while traveling westward on U.S. Highway 82, en route to the airport, he saw the Cessna 150, also westbound, flying parallel to the highway on his left side. He estimated the airplane's altitude as 50 to 100 feet above ground level (AGL), in level flight. The airplane was about one-quarter of a mile ahead of the car when he saw it climb steeply, and then turned left and descended straight down disappearing behind some trees. Examination of the airplane found that the leading edges of both wings were crushed aft at approximately a 55-degree nose down angle relative to level flight. Both wings were bulged outward (ballooned) in the area of the fuel tanks. Examination of the airframe and engine failed to disclose any pre-existing structural or mechanical malfunctions
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain airspeed , which resulted in an inadvertent stall, and subsequent collision with the ground. A contributing factor was low level flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL02FA143
- Event ID
- 20020719X01175
- Case number
- ATL02FA143
- 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, coordinates. 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: 24946a43bff62c39fa557c076bdc184d723cb8a69b2b93ea676ac24fa30ce91b; retrieved 2026-09-20T19:57:14.703Z.