IAD04LA023 · Cessna 150
Cessna 150 · Accident: on ground/water collision with terrain/water during takeoff
From Dewitt Field - Old Town Municipal Airport (OLD) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD04LA023
- 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
- N7793E
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dewitt Field - Old Town Municipal Airport (OLD), Old Town, METo 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- 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 › Aborted takeoff, not performed
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 stated that during the takeoff roll, when the airplane reached about 1/3 the runway's length (about 1,060 feet), he thought it should have been airborne. At 2/3 the runway's length (about 2,120 feet), the pilot knew he had a problem, but "rotated" the airplane at 40 knots and became airborne. After rotation, he felt that the engine was not developing full power, and was "sluggish and lacking horsepower." The pilot briefly employed carburetor heat, then attempted to adjust the engine's mixture control; however, neither adjustment improved the airplane's performance. After bouncing once in a field, the pilot was able to land the airplane on an interstate median, where it nosed over in muddy terrain. There was no evidence of mechanical malfunction. Computation of weight and balance information provided by the pilot revealed that the airplane was 184 pounds over maximum gross weight at takeoff. Performance data revealed that an airplane at maximum gross weight should have been airborne in less than 600 feet of runway distance.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to abort the takeoff. Factors were the pilot's incorrect assessment of the airplane's weight and the muddy terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD04LA023
- Event ID
- 20040712X00944
- Case number
- IAD04LA023
- 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: cd2d037af7b8812f707980b3e6d7a87b77787230ecdf16f09c7969d1973aa69a; retrieved 2026-09-22T07:32:19.393Z.