CHI04CA132 · Cessna 150
Cessna 150 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From 3BS · Midland, MI to 3BS · Midland, MI
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI04CA132
- 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
- N959B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 3BS · Midland, MITo 3BS · Midland, MI
- 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
- Approach · VFR go-around
- 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 › Directional control, 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 collided with the terrain following a loss of control during a go-around. The student reported he maintained an airspeed of 70 miles per hour with 20 degrees of flaps until he began the landing flare. He stated the airplane ballooned and drifted "slightly right" during the flare. He applied left aileron in an attempt to realign the airplane, but it veered to the left. He stated he then added full power at which time the airplane banked to the left. The left wing contacted the ground and the airplane cart wheeled, slid across a taxiway, and came to rest alongside a ditch. The student pilot stated he made 5 takeoffs and landing with his flight instructor on the morning of the accident. The accident occurred on the first solo landing of the day. The accident occurred on the student's second supervised solo flight. He reported having .5 hours of pilot in command flight time prior to this flight.
Probable cause
The student pilot failed to maintain control of the airplane during the go-around. A factor associated with the accident was the student's lack of experience.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI04CA132
- Event ID
- 20040628X00875
- Case number
- CHI04CA132
- 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: 2081d78af7d7f3297e42cf433f13595143014294e07f6c384a0b3db62c22532e; retrieved 2026-09-22T07:24:51.602Z.