ATL03FA023 · Cessna 150L
Cessna 150L · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Antonio Nery Juarbe Pol Airport (ABO) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL03FA023
- 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 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
- N11294
- Operator
- Carmelo B. Beniquez · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Antonio Nery Juarbe Pol Airport (ABO), Arecibo, PRTo 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
- Initial climb
- 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(vso), not maintained
- Pilot in command › Checklist, not followed
- Pilot in command › Flaps, improper use of
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was observed by witnesses taxiing out for takeoff and on the takeoff roll with the flaps extended. The airplane reached about 300 feet and the flaps were still observed in the down position. The airplane was in a climb attitude and the airspeed was described as slow. The witness looked away and heard a loud noise seconds later coming from the north side of the runway followed by black smoke. Radio contact was not established. The witness drove to the crash site and observed the airplane in a nose down attitude on fire with the tail section on the ground. Examination of the wreckage revealed the flaps were in the full down position. The checklist states flap deflections greater than 10-degrees are not recommended at any time for takeoff. Examination of the airframe, flight controls and engine assembly and accessories revealed no anomalies.
Probable cause
The pilots failure to follow the normal takeoff checklist (Wing Flaps-Up) and failure to maintain airspeed after takeoff that resulted in an inadvertent stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL03FA023
- Event ID
- 20021213X05603
- Case number
- ATL03FA023
- 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: df87f3b308f9854abfd503f4173be23d9a3146bb181448d9abbf9ff44aa5a23f; retrieved 2026-09-20T19:35:17.937Z.