DFW08FA004 · Cessna 150L
Cessna 150L · Accident: loss of engine power during initial climb
From Castroville, TX to Castroville, TX
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW08FA004
- 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 150L
- 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
- N11467
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Castroville, TXTo Castroville, TX
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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 engine power
- 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
- Stall/spin
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Dual student › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Dual student › Stall/spin, inadvertent
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
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 had been observed performing a high speed taxi on the full length of runway 15 prior to returning to the ramp, where the engine remained operational while additional checks and visual inspections were conducted. A second attempt was made to continue the training flight. A witness reported observing the airplane as it departed, lifting-off the runway near the first taxiway intersection, and noted that it appeared that the airplane was in a pronounced nose-high attitude and the airplane was "mushing along" the entire length of the runway, while slowly gaining altitude. Witnesses also noted that the airplane managed to attain an altitude between 150 and 200 feet above the ground, then observed the nose of the airplane pitch-up, followed by the airplane entering an abrupt right bank prior to assuming a near vertical nose-down attitude to ground impact. A witness, who was in the traffic pattern at the airport, reported that she heard a mayday call from the accident airplane that reported "mayday, mayday, we've lost power, we're going down." Flight and engine control continuity was established at the accident site. No anomalies were found with the engine that could have prevented normal flight. The airplane was found to be within weight and balance limits. The density altitude was calculated by the investigator in charge at 2,732- feet.
Probable cause
Loss of engine power for undetermined reasons and the pilot receiving instruction's failure to maintain aircraft control resulting in the stall. A factor contributing to the accident was the instructor pilot's delayed remedial action.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW08FA004
- Event ID
- 20071023X01643
- Case number
- DFW08FA004
- 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: ec0f52c7fef0452caab788dd1c2f0bde3d17a8db0431fb82bea4c40fcc94b466; retrieved 2026-09-20T16:12:44.725Z.