WPR17FA118 · Cessna 150M M
Cessna 150M M · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Redlands Municipal Airport (REI) to Redlands Municipal Airport (REI)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR17FA118
- 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
- 1 · 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 M
- 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
- N66117
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Redlands Municipal Airport (REI), Redlands, CATo Redlands Municipal Airport (REI), Redlands, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 43 years (built 1974)
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor and student pilot were conducting an instructional flight. After completing airwork, they returned to the airport to perform touch-and-go takeoffs and landings. The student reported that the first landing was "hard" and that the wind was gusting; however, they continued the subsequent takeoff. He reported that, during the initial climb, the airplane drifted right of the runway centerline. The student pilot had the flight instructor take over control of the airplane and shortly thereafter, it impacted trees. A witness reported that, about 100 ft above ground level during the takeoff, the airplane began to lose altitude and the wings wobbled; it impacted trees near railroad tracks and a highway adjacent to the airport. Another witness described a similar sequence of events and stated that there was, "more than enough runway and overrun to abort but [the airplane] seemed to keep trying to climb until it finally crashed." Examination of the airplane and engine revealed no mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Wind conditions recorded by nearby weather reporting stations were consistent with an 8 knot gusting tailwind. Additionally, the density altitude about the time of the accident was 8,500 ft, which would have resulted in a reduced climb rate. It is likely that the combination of wind conditions and the density altitude greatly reduced the airplane's takeoff performance and that the instructor subsequently exceeded the airplane's critical angle of attack while attempting to climb the airplane, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall and a loss of control.
Probable cause
The flight instructor's decision to continue the takeoff in gusting tailwind and high density altitude conditions, which significantly reduced airplane performance, and his subsequent exceedance of the airplane's critical angle of attack during the initial climb, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall at low altitude.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR17FA118
- Event ID
- 20170603X00247
- Case number
- WPR17FA118
- 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: 6e61ddcf98be3d3258baa9e28fdb80912bccb0e6e6b15e4721b962c8d516b2df; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:03:33.479Z.