ERA12CA390 · Cessna 150H
Cessna 150H · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Warrior, AL (no airport) to Shelby County Airport (EET)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA12CA390
- 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
- N6963S
- Operator
- Reid Don W
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Warrior, AL (no airport)To Shelby County Airport (EET), Alabaster, AL
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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 pilot reported that the airplane was about to touch down on runway 16, when a gust of wind pushed the airplane toward trees along the right side of the runway. The pilot added power and tried, unsuccessfully, to avoid the trees. Two witnesses observed the airplane in a nose-high attitude over the runway as it drifted right into trees. One of the witnesses said that about 30 minutes before the accident the wind was from 110 degrees at 9 knots and was increasing in velocity. The recorded wind at the airport, about 30 minutes after the accident, was from 140 degrees at 14 knots, gusting to 24 knots. Examination of the airplane did not reveal any preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation; substantial damage was observed on the right wing.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain directional control while landing in gusting wind conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA12CA390
- Event ID
- 20120612X50856
- Case number
- ERA12CA390
- 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: 66e8eeab18a186082d8cbe93f90fcdad4ce6fc13d55cb8a1f3abf2847d41a93d; retrieved 2026-09-15T18:28:13.797Z.