LAX05FA062 · Cessna 150J
Cessna 150J · Accident: in flight collision with object en route
From Marana Regional Airport (AVQ) to Marana Regional Airport (AVQ)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX05FA062
- 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
- 1 · 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 150J
- 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
- N51256
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Marana Regional Airport (AVQ), Marana, AZTo Marana Regional Airport (AVQ), Marana, AZ
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Wire, static
- 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 › Altitude, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Clearance, 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 power lines while maneuvering at low altitude. The airplane owner said the pilot had stopped by his residence around 0600 on the morning of the accident to ask if he could take the owner's daughter on the flight. The owner indicated that it was too early to get her up, so the pilot went to the airport by himself. Around the time of the accident the owner and his spouse were in their front yard with their coffee and newspaper walking towards the back of the house when they saw the accident airplane. The airplane made one low pass over them. On the second pass, the airplane was headed to the west, and crossed over the north-to-south power lines. They continued toward the back of their house as the airplane made the turn back toward the house. The owner then heard the sounds of the airplane contacting the power lines. As he came to the front of the house, the owner saw the airplane coming to its final resting place about 150 feet from the power lines with its nose in the ground. The poles that held the lines were measured at a height of 47 feet above ground level. The static power lines were about 2 feet below that, at a height of 45 feet. The most westerly static power line had been cut. The other cable wrapped around the airplane; however, it remained connected to the poles. The airframe and engine were inspected. Investigators established flight control continuity and engine continuity. There were no mechanical anomalies found that would have precluded normal operation of the airplane.
Probable cause
the failure of the pilot to maintain an adequate altitude and clearance from obstructions that resulted in an in-flight collision with power lines.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX05FA062
- Event ID
- 20050120X00087
- Case number
- LAX05FA062
- 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: c2befe237759ae21bc1e07fa5e9b1389f783473c4befa3719cb4f11e664e6f7b; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:09:33.076Z.