CHI08CA235 · Cessna 150L
Cessna 150L · Accident: collision with terrain/object (non-CFIT) en route
From Mitchell Municipal Airport (MHE) to Watertown Regional Airport (ATY)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI08CA235
- 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 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
- N16235
- Operator
- Mitchell S. Pratt · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mitchell Municipal Airport (MHE), Mitchell, SDTo Watertown Regional Airport (ATY), Watertown, SD
- 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
- Defining eventThe 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
- Collision with terrain/object (non-CFIT)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that during the cross country night flight he began losing altitude while listening to the automated weather service broadcast for the destination airport. He did not notice the altitude loss. The pilot decided to go to an alternate airport, turned for the alternate, and descended during the turn. At that point he noticed the altitude loss, pulled back on the yoke, and impacted a cornfield. The pilot reported no mechanical malfunctions with the airplane during the accident flight. The pilot's safety recommendation was "haze is deceptive."
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain altitude/clearance from terrain during cruise. Contributing to the accident was the night, the haze, and the tall vegetation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI08CA235
- Event ID
- 20080826X01328
- Case number
- CHI08CA235
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2008-08-04.
- API snapshot SHA-256: d3cbe9f149d353e17b448b515c34ac3bb245247cf40ebb293e576e6d64354ea7; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:06:43.679Z.