ERA10FA503 · Cessna 150F
Cessna 150F · Accident: VFR encounter with IMC en route
From Cobb County International Airport-McCollum Field (RYY) to Knoxville Downtown Island Airport (DKX)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10FA503
- 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
- 1 · 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna 150F
- 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
- N7915F
- Operator
- Doug Hair
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cobb County International Airport-McCollum Field (RYY), Marietta, GATo Knoxville Downtown Island Airport (DKX), Knoxville, TN
- 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
- 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
- VFR encounter with IMC
- 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
- Personnel issues › Psychological
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot did not possess an instrument rating and had not logged any actual instrument experience. During the 2 days prior to the accident flight, the pilot had completed two cross-country flights uneventfully and he was returning home on the accident flight. The pilot did not contact the flight service station for a weather briefing. Visual meteorological conditions prevailed at the departure airport; however, instrument meteorological conditions were present along the route of flight and near the destination airport. About 1 hour into the cross-country flight, the airplane impacted hilly terrain about 1,300 feet mean sea level (msl). Radar data indicated that 1 minute prior to the accident, the airplane began a right turn, followed by a descending left turn, with the last recorded target at 1,600 feet msl about 1/4 mile from the accident site. One witness stated that it was foggy in the area at the time of the accident. The recorded weather at a nearby airport, located at 1,031 feet msl, included an overcast ceiling at 600 feet. Examination of the wreckage did not reveal any preimpact mechanical malfunctions. If neither horizon or surface references exist, the attitude of an airplane must be determined by artificial means from the flight instruments. However, during periods of low visibility, the supporting senses sometimes conflict with what is seen, and when this happens, a pilot is particularly vulnerable to spatial disorientation.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight weather planning and improper decision to continue a visual flight rules flight into instrument meteorological conditions, which resulted in spatial disorientation and a loss of control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10FA503
- Event ID
- 20100926X33046
- Case number
- ERA10FA503
- 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: 6fab9dea4154328231c363a99913e81185ac57ed5dff568f5bb73fb426beb4c1; retrieved 2026-09-13T21:03:59.738Z.