ERA15LA114 · Cessna 150 L
Cessna 150 L · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) on approach
From Lakeland Linder International Airport (LAL) to Fernandina Beach Municipal Airport (FHB)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA15LA114
- 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 150 L
- 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
- N10616
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lakeland Linder International Airport (LAL), Lakeland, FLTo Fernandina Beach Municipal Airport (FHB), Fernandina Beach, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 42 years (built 1973)
- 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 final
- 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
- Controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT)
- 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 › Physical
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot was returning to his home airport during a personal cross-country flight. The pilot reported that, during the flight, he experienced a pain in his right shoulder, followed by intense pain in his left shoulder. Although he had experienced pain previously in his right shoulder during long car rides, he had never experienced pain in his left shoulder before. Due to the intense pain, the pilot contacted air traffic control, declared an emergency, and requested that an ambulance wait for his arrival. He attempted to line up to the runway for landing but was unable to do so. The airplane impacted a berm and nosed over about 1/2 mile from the airport. The pilot could not recall any other details after that time. The pilot extricated himself from the inverted airplane and was subsequently taken to a hospital. A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed no preimpact mechanical failures or malfunctions that would have precluded normal operation.
During the pilot's postaccident hospital evaluation, no definitive reason for the pain was found. However, considering the pilot's recollection, the intense pain he experienced likely impaired his ability to safely control the airplane and resulted in the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot’s physical impairment due to intense pain, which resulted in his failure to maintain airplane control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA15LA114
- Event ID
- 20150125X90257
- Case number
- ERA15LA114
- 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. 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: ea43e47282fddfaad41d0a47c62347a26b90776f8f3bd147edc303765341d0ae; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:02:57.592Z.