DEN03LA148 · Cessna 150H
Cessna 150H · Accident: on ground/water collision with terrain/water during landing
From Jackson Hole Airport (JAC) to Moran, WY
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN03LA148
- 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 150H
- 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
- N23108
- Operator
- Danny Lee Luton
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Jackson Hole Airport (JAC), Jackson, WYTo Moran, WY
- 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
- Landing · landing roll
- 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
- On ground/water collision with terrain/water
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Unsuitable terrain or takeoff/landing/taxi area, selected
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 reported he was performing a touch-and-go to a hayfield at his brother's ranch. The pilot said, "After rolling a short distance, I added full power and at the point of takeoff, hit a badger hole which jerked the aircraft." The pilot said he corrected to the left but was close to a low-lying area filled with willow bushes. The pilot said he lost airspeed and had the nose of the airplane up. He said he turned right to keep out of the higher willows. The pilot said the airplane mushed through the willows and struck the opposite bank of the low-lying area, causing substantial damage to both wings and separating the empennage from the aft fuselage. An examination of the airplane revealed no anomalies.
Probable cause
the pilot's selection of an unsuitable takeoff area which resulted in an encounter with the gopher hole during the touch-and-go. Factors contributing to the accident were the gopher hole, the abrupt pull up, the low airspeed, the inadvertent stall mush, the high vegetation, and the embankment.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN03LA148
- Event ID
- 20030903X01440
- Case number
- DEN03LA148
- 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: f095b273416e5ba2772d0589028eb870d4de6b748baf0e3c9c1279861e421799; retrieved 2026-09-22T08:37:04.696Z.