SEA04CA136 · Cessna 150L
Cessna 150L · Accident: in flight collision with object during takeoff
From Pearson Field (VUO) to Daybreak Airport (WA46)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA04CA136
- 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 150L
- 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
- N18542
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pearson Field (VUO), Vancouver, WATo Daybreak Airport (WA46), Daybreak Apt, WA
- 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 · rejected 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
- In flight collision with object
- 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
- Tree(s)
- 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 › Procedures/directives, not followed
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor was giving a private pilot a flight review. He said that the private pilot had set up the landing and had lowered the flaps to the full down position. The flight instructor reported that they were high and long for a landing. He told the private pilot to abort the landing. The private pilot first raised the flaps, and the airplane "immediately" mushed to a lower altitude. The flight instructor said that he applied full power and put the carburetor heat in [off]. He took control of the airplane and attempted to continue flight. The airplane struck some trees and impacted the ground. The private pilot receiving the flight review said that he thought he put the power in first and then put the carburetor heat in [off]. He had an estimated 200 hours of flight experience, and he said that he flies approximately 5 to 10 hours per year. The Owner's Manual states that a go-around is performed by: 1. Throttle -- Full "Open." 2. Carburetor Heat -- Cold. 3. Wing Flaps -- Retract to 20 degrees. 4. Upon reaching an airspeed of approximately 65 MPH, retract flaps slowly.
Probable cause
The private pilot receiving the flight review's failure to follow the Owner’s Manual's procedures for a go-around. Contributing factors were the flight instructor's delay in telling the private pilot to go-around, and the trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA04CA136
- Event ID
- 20040810X01178
- Case number
- SEA04CA136
- 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: 70abdfa9857ba579242bfd625c6016424b4e2e70e52227e39c8902ac85bc3a1d; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:11:45.707Z.