ATL04CA197 · Cessna 150M
Cessna 150M · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during takeoff
From Seymour Air Park (TN20) to Sky Ranch Airport (TN98)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL04CA197
- 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 150M
- 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
- N45667
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Seymour Air Park (TN20), Sevierville, TNTo Sky Ranch Airport (TN98), Knoxville, TN
- 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 · roll/run
- 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 on ground/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 › 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 pilot stated at on take-off roll and at fifty knots, the windshield and side glass fogged up to the point of zero visibility. He stated that he sensed that the aircraft was drifting to the left, at which point he unsuccessfully attempted to correct the path to the right. He stated that he retarded the throttle and began to shut down the plane. The airplane's left wing collided with tall brush and bushes, nosed over in soft mud, and came to rest inverted. Post-accident examination of the accident scene revealed tire marks beginning at the approach end of runway 7, veering left off the runway for approximately 975 feet into brush and soft mud. Other marks were observed in the soft mud leading up to the inverted airplane. One blade of the propeller was buried in the mud. Examination of the airplane revealed the left outboard half of the wing was crushed aft and the right wingtip was separated. The vertical stabilizer was displaced to the right. The nearest weather reporting facility, McGhee-Tyson Airport, Knoxville, Tennessee, 10 nautical miles southwest of Seymour Airpark, Sevierville, Tennessee, at 0653, reported winds as 050 degrees at four knots, visibility of four statute miles in mist, and temperature-dew point of 12 degrees Celsius. Examination of the pilot logbooks revealed that an endorsement for repeated solo flights less than 25 nautical miles was not entered by a certified flight instructor. There were no logbook entry remarks of flight training to or from Seymour Airpark, or take-offs or landing made at Seymour Airpark entered or signed of by a certified flight instructor.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain directional control during an attempted takeoff, which resulted in the on ground collision with high vegetation and a subsequent nose over. Factors were a foggy windshield and windshield defrost not activated.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL04CA197
- Event ID
- 20041022X01681
- Case number
- ATL04CA197
- 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: 3891cb800391aa5b6ae0c171dc9b68654498fd435d247941ec0406c282e28459; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:39:49.675Z.