WPR12LA160 · Cessna 150H
Cessna 150H · Accident on approach
From Sanderson Field (SHN) to Norman Grier Field (S36)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR12LA160
- 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 150H
- 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
- N6616S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sanderson Field (SHN), Shelton, WATo Norman Grier Field (S36), Kent, WA
- Aircraft age
- About 45 years (built 1967)
- 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 downwind
- 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
- Unknown or undetermined
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that he was on a personal cross-country flight to visit friends and that he had intended to land at a private uncontrolled airstrip; however, he did not recall the events leading up to the accident. A witness in the area reported hearing an unusual sound that drew his attention to the airplane. He observed the airplane flying about 20 ft above the ground in a 90-degree, right-wing-low attitude when it collided with trees. The airplane came to rest inverted about midfield of the airstrip on a street adjacent to the airstrip in a residential neighborhood. A postaccident airframe and engine examination revealed no mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. It is likely that, while the pilot was maneuvering the airplane on the downwind leg of the traffic pattern for the destination airstrip, he failed to maintain control and subsequently collided with trees.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain airplane control while maneuvering in the traffic pattern, which resulted in a collision with trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR12LA160
- Event ID
- 20120409X64055
- Case number
- WPR12LA160
- 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: d7d7fcee5826a6086d42a94bb5aa735db83ae16540bee6a0b47571a62e86f37d; retrieved 2026-09-15T17:42:07.529Z.