CEN17FA281 · Cessna 150F
Cessna 150F · Accident: low altitude operation/event while maneuvering
From Union Parish Airport (F87) to Union Parish Airport (F87)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN17FA281
- 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 150F
- 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
- N8661S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Union Parish Airport (F87), Farmerville, LATo Union Parish Airport (F87), Farmerville, LA
- Aircraft age
- About 51 years (built 1966)
- 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
- Maneuvering · low-altitude flying
- 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
- Low altitude operation/event
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While on a personal flight, the airline transport pilot made several low passes over a lake in front of a friend's house. The friend and two other witnesses reported that, on its last pass, the airplane was flying at a low altitude when it pitched down slightly, impacted the surface of the lake, nosed over, and sank. The friend reported hearing the engine "sputter" followed by an increase in power before the impact, and one of the other witnesses reported that the engine was running throughout the low pass.
A postaccident examination of the wreckage did not find any preimpact anomalies that would have precluded normal operation of the airplane. Although the temperature and dew point were conducive to serious icing at glide power, the witness observations and forward bending of the propeller blades were consistent with the engine operating at cruise or climb power at impact.
A portable GPS unit found in the wreckage did not contain any data about the accident flight. However, the GPS unit did record data consistent with previous flights where an airplane flew near the accident location. Additionally, one witness stated that the pilot was friends with a neighbor and had conducted numerous low passes over the lake during the previous 4 years.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance from the lake during a low-level maneuver.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN17FA281
- Event ID
- 20170724X15957
- Case number
- CEN17FA281
- 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: dcc6803632f34bfa202be6dfaec38b2f25b8edca5d200da6be238db10c122d9f; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:09:29.135Z.