CHI05FA103 · Cessna 150M
Cessna 150M · Accident: in flight encounter with weather during landing
From FES · Festus, MO to FES · Festus, MO
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI05FA103
- 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
- Instrument 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
- N45522
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From FES · Festus, MOTo FES · Festus, MO
- 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
- Landing
- 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 encounter with weather
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Weather evaluation, inadequate
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 impacted terrain while attempting to land at the departure airport immediately after takeoff. The passenger reported that prior to takeoff the weather at the airport was "sunny and nice, with a slight breeze." The passenger stated that the takeoff was "real smooth" and when they turned to the west they immediately saw dark clouds. The passenger reported that the pilot immediately decided to return to the airport because of the approaching storm. Witnesses reported seeing the airplane banking erratically while on approach to runway 18 and one witness stated the airplane "turned on its left side and went behind the trees." The airplane impacted left wing first approximately 36 feet off the left side of runway 18. The wreckage path was about 77 feet long and was on a 145 degree magnetic heading. The on-site inspection of the airframe, engine, and related systems did not reveal any evidence of pre-impact malfunction. The passenger reported that the pilot did not verify weather conditions prior to departure and that the approaching storm was not visible from the airport. The airport is located in a valley which is flanked by higher elevation to the west and east. A Convective SIGMET was current at the time of the accident and encompassed the accident location. The Convective SIGMET was issued for a severe line of thunderstorms moving east-southeast at 20 knots, with cloud tops reaching 41,000 feet mean sea level (msl), wind gusts of 60 knots, and 1.5-inch diameter hail. Intense to extreme weather radar returns (50 to 55 dBZ) consisting of level 5 and 6 thunderstorms passed over the accident site between 1659 and 1729. Level 5 and 6 thunderstorms are characterized as "Intense" and "Extreme" by the National Weather Service. A plot depicting the radial wind velocities indicated northerly winds of 36 knots or greater as the thunderstorms passed over the accident site. A witness reported that wind was blowing "extremely hard from the west" and that leaves and debris were "blowing almost horizontally above the road surface."
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight weather evaluation and his failure to maintain aircraft control during the landing approach. A contributing factor to the accident was the pilot's inadvertent flight in close proximity to a severe thunderstorm associated with high velocity/gusting winds and rain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI05FA103
- Event ID
- 20050428X00517
- Case number
- CHI05FA103
- 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: d7c475a43a80440b4f01af348556d95b48b8b5aaff884bc663d14fcb0d9b248e; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:04:33.373Z.