CEN12LA507 · Cessna 150M
Cessna 150M · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From an unrecorded airport to Blackhawk Airfield (87Y)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN12LA507
- 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 150M
- 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
- N45080
- Operator
- James L Sainsbury · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Blackhawk Airfield (87Y), Cottage Grove, WI
- 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
- Loss of control on ground
- 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 › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- 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
After an uneventful local flight, the pilot decided to land on runway 4 since he had not landed on that runway in a long time. After a normal approach, the pilot landed the airplane just slightly left of the centerline but did not think that it was overly to the left. As the airplane coasted to taxi speed, the left wing contacted high vegetation and overgrown brush overhanging the left side of the runway. The airplane then veered to the left off the side of the runway and collided into brush and small trees, resulting in substantial damage to the leading edges of both wings. High vegetation, up to 12 feet tall, was found by the runway and was overhanging the west side of the runway by 2 to 4 feet. High vegetation was also overhanging the east side of the runway by 1 to 3 feet. The published runway 4 width is 57 feet, but the usable width for landing was narrowed by about 7 feet due to the overgrown vegetation. The pilot stated that he should have landed on runway 27, knowing that it was clear of vegetation on both sides. He said that he was not aware of just how much brush had overgrown the sides of runway 4 since the last time he landed there a few years ago. The pilot stated that if he had made a more perfect landing on the centerline and rolled out on centerline, the wingtip of the airplane would not have contacted the overgrown brush. Currently, the published information for the airfield includes information stating that brush and high vegetation surround the edges of runways 4/22.
Probable cause
The pilot's decision to land on a runway with significant overgrown vegetation along the edges and his landing, which was left of the centerline.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN12LA507
- Event ID
- 20120802X43337
- Case number
- CEN12LA507
- 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: 6e40f05278ed5ba8089f78fc7ea4a136cb9eac7aacdc054e922951d082677414; retrieved 2026-09-15T19:10:39.366Z.