ERA09CA274 · Cessna 150K
Cessna 150K · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Lake City Gateway Airport (LCQ) to Waycross Ware County Airport (AYS)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA09CA274
- 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 150K
- 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
- N6213G
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lake City Gateway Airport (LCQ), Lake City, FLTo Waycross Ware County Airport (AYS), Waycross, GA
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot reported that the en route flight conditions of his solo cross-country flight were smooth and the arrival airport traffic pattern was normal. On final approach, a strong windshear pushed the nose of the airplane down when he was approximately 100 feet above ground level, and about 300 feet from the threshold of Runway 13. He reduced power and pulled back on the control yoke. The main landing gear impacted sandy soil prior to the runway surface, followed by the nose gear, which dug into the ground and caused the airplane to nose over. The airplane received substantial damage to both wing spars, the firewall, the left elevator, and the vertical stabilizer. The pilot did not report any preimpact mechanical malfunctions. He stated that the winds were 120 degrees at 10 knots, gusting to 18 knots. The pilot reported 24 hours of total flight experience, of which 7 hours were solo flight. During a postaccident interview, the pilot discovered that he referenced the wrong scale on the airspeed indicator. The outer scale indicated airspeed in mph and the inner scale indicated airspeed in knots. He referenced the outer scale, labeled as mph, which he incorrectly thought was indicating knots.
Probable cause
The student pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control during approach in gusty conditions. Contributing to the accident was the student pilot's misunderstanding of the airspeed indicator.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA09CA274
- Event ID
- 20090429X62952
- Case number
- ERA09CA274
- 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: investigation status. 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: b0497732b97523a5e593ad8d26ddbaa60d9c55909c1d48d5c2656faeda0eb4d5; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:59:52.531Z.