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ATL04CA197 · Cessna 150M

30 Sept 2004 · Sevierville, TN, United States

Cessna 150M · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during takeoff

From Seymour Air Park (TN20) to Sky Ranch Airport (TN98)

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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.