WPR11CA148 · Cessna A150M
Cessna A150M · Accident: nose over/nose down during landing
From Rancho Murieta Airport (RIU) to Nevada County Airport (GOO)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR11CA148
- 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 A150M
- 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
- N7951V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rancho Murieta Airport (RIU), Rancho Murieta, CATo Nevada County Airport (GOO), Grass Valley, CA
- 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
- Nose over/nose down
- 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
- Environmental issues › Operating environment
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Upon entering the airport environment, the pilot observed a snow-covered runway. He obtained an automated weather observation report (AWOS) from the non-towered airport, with no indication on the recording that the runway was closed. Shortly after touchdown, as the airplane began its roll out, the landing gear entered an area of 12-inch-deep snow and the airplane nosed over. After exiting the airplane, the pilot spoke to the airport manager who informed him that due to a power outage in the area, he had not been able to update the AWOS recording informing pilots of the runway closure due to snow. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the vertical stabilizer and to both wings. The pilot stated that there were no mechanical abnormalities with the airplane prior to the accident.
Probable cause
The aircraft's encounter with deep snow during the landing roll out. Contributing to the accident was the airport manager's failure to update the AWOS recording to reflect the closure of the runway due to snow.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR11CA148
- Event ID
- 20110227X70413
- Case number
- WPR11CA148
- 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: 73e2a3d2be7832fa27c7945acf5dcd7d5cfd232d6561c55ad64c90fa43b6f3da; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:51:27.664Z.