ATL07CA071 · Cessna C-150H
Cessna C-150H · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water during landing
From Dyersburg, TN (private airstrip) to Dyersburg, TN (private airstrip)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL07CA071
- 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 C-150H
- Aircraft type
- Cessna C-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
- N6555S
- Operator
- Tony R. Willis · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dyersburg, TN (private airstrip)To Dyersburg, TN (private airstrip)
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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 › Distance/altitude, misjudged
- Pilot in command › Proper touchdown point, not attained
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 a ditch short of the runway threshhold. According to the student pilot, he was practicing "on point or spot landings". He stated that he "landed too close to the south end of the strip and got the left landing gear caught in a ditch about 8 inches from the top, causing the gear to bend backwards and causing the aircraft to veer to the left. He regained control of the aircraft and stopped." He further stated that he "should have picked a spot further down the runway to practice spot landings." Damage to the airplane consisted of both landing gear and damage to surrounding airframe structure. There were no pre-impact mechanical problems reported by the pilot.
Probable cause
The student's pilot's misjudged distance/altitude that led to an undershoot and a failure to attain the proper touchdown point.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL07CA071
- Event ID
- 20070523X00622
- Case number
- ATL07CA071
- 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: 987c3e54a5189da15d6609a536cccea32be7f397d2987517575d48f994f8e5f6; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:55:09.015Z.