ANC12LA031 · Cessna 150F
Cessna 150F · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Fairbanks International Airport (PAFA) to Fairbanks International Airport (PAFA)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC12LA031
- 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 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
- N7911F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fairbanks International Airport (PAFA), Fairbanks, AKTo Fairbanks International Airport (PAFA), Fairbanks, AK
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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 student pilot departed on a solo local area practice flight. He said that during the takeoff roll, he held forward pressure on the yoke to keep the nose wheel on the ground. At 50 mph, he let the nose wheel come off the ground, and the airplane rotated into a steep climb. He tried to push the nose down, but the stall warning horn sounded, and the airplane descended toward the ground. He said he did not reduce engine power, and he did not remember checking the elevator trim position before takeoff.
Another student pilot who flew the airplane earlier, reported that he was with an instructor and that his flight was uneventful. He said there were no problems associated with the airplane’s controls. His last landing was a simulated engine out, and he utilized a lot of nose-up trim to maintain the best angle of glide. He said he does not routinely return the trim to neutral after a flight.
An inspection of the airplane showed the trim was set close to the full nose-up position. It is likely that the pilot did not check the trim setting during the pretakeoff inspection, which would have been indicated in the pretakeoff checklist. No interference was found with the flight controls.
Probable cause
The student pilot did not control the airplane’s pitch attitude, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall during the takeoff initial climb. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s failure to use the pre-takeoff checklist.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC12LA031
- Event ID
- 20120421X20827
- Case number
- ANC12LA031
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2012-04-22.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 6fcef9c75cb41d3873d7af4760dff7937ceda5cf2125ce1d47c837c13968da90; retrieved 2026-09-15T17:50:58.504Z.