CHI07FA079 · Cessna 150M
Cessna 150M · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water while maneuvering
From Virgil I Grissom Municipal Airport (BFR) to Virgil I Grissom Municipal Airport (BFR)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI07FA079
- 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
- 2 · 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
- N66513
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Virgil I Grissom Municipal Airport (BFR), Bedford, INTo Virgil I Grissom Municipal Airport (BFR), Bedford, IN
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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 terrain/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 › Suicide
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Eyewitnesses reported that the airplane was on a high final approach to runway 6 when it made a sudden 90-degree left turn to the north. The airplane then momentarily leveled its wings before entering a 45-degree dive toward the ground. The eyewitnesses thought it was unusual that the airplane was maneuvering toward runway 6, because the winds were out of the west. The airplane contacted a tree line before impacting an asphalt driveway and a house. The calculated descent angle was 28-degrees. According to the Indiana State Police, the student pilot and his ex-wife had an on-going custody dispute concerning their minor daughter. The passenger on board the airplane was the pilot's minor daughter. The house that the airplane impacted belonged to the pilot's ex-mother-in-law. The event was handled by the Indiana State Police as a murder/suicide homicide investigation. According to FAA regulation 14 CFR Part 61.89(a), a student pilot is prohibited from acting as pilot-in-command of an aircraft carrying passengers. Examination of the wreckage revealed no evidence of a pre-impact mechanical malfunction.
Probable cause
Suicide.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI07FA079
- Event ID
- 20070312X00274
- Case number
- CHI07FA079
- 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: 4c9bcebbe641f01900a985f99c420f245796c7423be199ec230e567c8fc842ab; retrieved 2026-09-20T16:48:50.049Z.