NYC04CA125 · Cessna 150
Cessna 150 · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From David Lowe Airport (80KY) to David Lowe Airport (80KY)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC04CA125
- 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 150
- 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
- N7795E
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From David Lowe Airport (80KY), Sacramento, KYTo David Lowe Airport (80KY)
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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
- 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 › Compensation for wind conditions, inadequate
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, shortly after takeoff from runway 34, at an altitude of about 1,000 feet, he observed "dark clouds" surrounding the airport, and decided to return to the airport to land. As he turned onto final approach at 700 feet, and about 65 mph, he noticed the wind was blowing from the southwest, and applied left aileron and right rudder to compensate for it. During the landing flare, a gust of wind blew the airplane to the right. The airplane touched down on the right side of the runway, but the pilot was unable to maintain correction with full left rudder and braking. The airplane then continued off the runway, and impacted a parked car and then a garage door on the airport, before coming to rest.
Winds reported at an airport about 40 miles to the southwest, at 1353, were from 180 degrees at 15 knots, gusting to 22 knots.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper decision to land with a tailwind, and his inadequate compensation for the wind conditions. A factor was the tailwind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC04CA125
- Event ID
- 20040617X00832
- Case number
- NYC04CA125
- 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: 6fd60f769dbe4b9df7e0a9c6bdcbdff318e12e17f244f033c37e93009f9be47b; retrieved 2026-09-22T07:33:47.648Z.