CHI04CA092 · Cessna 150J
Cessna 150J · Accident: on ground/water collision with object while taxiing
From Gardner Municipal Airport (K34) to Gardner Municipal Airport (K34)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI04CA092
- 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 150J
- 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
- N51365
- Operator
- Jerrry Shetterly
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Gardner Municipal Airport (K34), Gardner, KSTo Gardner Municipal Airport (K34)
- 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
- Taxi
- 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 object
- 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
- Dual student › Visual lookout, not maintained
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Clearance, 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 airplane sustained substantial damage when the right wingtip hit a post while taxiing on the ramp. The certified flight instructor (CFI) reported the post was hit while he was taxiing back to park the airplane after conducting an hour of training in the local area. The CFI reported that the student pilot was taxiing the airplane back to the ramp where the aircraft tie-downs were located. The student pilot, who was seated in the left seat of the airplane, taxied too close to the post that was attached to a building, and the right wingtip struck the post.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate visual lookout and failure to maintain clearance from the post. A factor was the post.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI04CA092
- Event ID
- 20040419X00476
- Case number
- CHI04CA092
- 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: 8c6a5c6cdd58398469c057ea8bb8662019b3323263735a6926d256d344d5d89f; retrieved 2026-09-22T07:49:57.093Z.