ERA10CA124 · Cessna 150 L
Cessna 150 L · Accident: runway excursion during landing
From Taunton Municipal King Field (TAN) to Taunton Municipal King Field (TAN)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10CA124
- 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 150 L
- 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
- N5478Q
- Operator
- Nelson Woodward
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Taunton Municipal King Field (TAN), Taunton, MATo Taunton Municipal King Field (TAN), Taunton, MA
- 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 · landing roll
- 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
- Runway excursion
- 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 pilot was landing on the 3,500-foot-long runway, which was oriented 300 degrees magnetic. Prior to touchdown, the pilot decided to conduct a touch-and-go landing. The pilot stated that after touchdown he moved the carburetor heat to the "cold" position and applied power to take off. The engine "stumbled and popped," and the pilot aborted the takeoff and "applied hard braking." The airplane departed the end of the runway and impacted snow and ice past the runway edge. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the engine firewall. A witness stated that he saw the airplane "level off" at "the first one-third point" and continue down the runway "at an altitude of 15 feet and estimated 70 knots." He stated that the airplane touched down "on the last quarter of the runway," and he heard tires "squealing." A Federal Aviation Administration inspector who examined the airplane after the accident identified no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures. The recorded weather observation around the time of the accident included winds from 230 degrees at 11 knots, with gusts to 19 knots.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to obtain the proper touchdown point during landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10CA124
- Event ID
- 20100127X02447
- Case number
- ERA10CA124
- 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: 1c512e72f2756015b41bf863de295b85067875d3fd13b1d02f0d4abd5a791920; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:38:57.091Z.