ERA10CA420 · Cessna 150A
Cessna 150A · Accident: collision with terrain/object (non-CFIT) during initial climb
From West Liberty Airport (9I3) to West Liberty Airport (9I3)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10CA420
- 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 150A
- 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
- N7023X
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From West Liberty Airport (9I3), West Liberty, KYTo West Liberty Airport (9I3), West Liberty, KY
- 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
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, he filled the airplane with 26 gallons of fuel before the accident flight. Following a preflight inspection, he set the flaps at 10 degrees for departure. After the airplane became airborne, the pilot began turning 30 degrees to the left when he noticed that the airplane was not going to clear the trees. The pilot stated that he heard the stall warning horn before the airplane hit the trees. The airplane descended to the ground and came to rest inverted, resulting in substantial damage. The pilot stated that he had made a poor decision to depart with the airplane's high gross weight and the high density altitude. The pilot reported no mechanical failures or malfunctions of the airplane.
Probable cause
The pilot's premature turn toward trees during the initial climb. Contributing to the accident was the airplane's high gross weight and density altitude that precluded a normal takeoff and climb.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10CA420
- Event ID
- 20100814X13506
- Case number
- ERA10CA420
- 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, 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: 36345c68976217d4c4f5648a21b7558f413304a2383c2ad7a43f70e40cca1f1b; retrieved 2026-09-15T14:50:36.426Z.