ERA13CA051 · Cessna 150L
Finger Lakes Flying Service Cessna 150L · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Finger Lakes Regional Airport (0G7) to Finger Lakes Regional Airport (0G7)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA13CA051
- 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 150L
- 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
- N1791Q
- Operator
- Finger Lakes Flying Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Finger Lakes Regional Airport (0G7), Seneca Falls, NYTo Finger Lakes Regional Airport (0G7), Seneca Falls, NY
- 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 › Action/decision
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 did not obtain a preflight weather briefing before the local flight. At the time of departure the wind was from 270 degrees at 9 knots; however, the pilot reported that after being airborne for about 1 hour 15 minutes, the wind velocity at the airport had increased to 17 knots with gusts to 28 knots. When the pilot returned to the departure airport, he decided to land on the grass runway designated 28. He said that he flew a normal traffic pattern, and as he was flaring to land, a wind gust raised the left wing. He immediately applied left aileron and right rudder inputs and leveled the wings, but the airplane drifted to the left. The left main landing gear went into a ditch and the left wingtip was substantially damaged when it contacted the corn crop adjacent to the runway. The pilot stated that there were no preimpact mechanical failures or malfunctions of the airplane or systems that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s inadequate compensation for wind conditions during landing, which resulted in an impact with a drainage ditch.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA13CA051
- Event ID
- 20121108X35019
- Case number
- ERA13CA051
- 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: b24fd1f3d27092701f02d6f00801c5ce08dbdfe124c51c617cec5e9b470e63b9; retrieved 2026-09-15T20:22:45.919Z.