GAA19CA543 · Cessna 150 L
Cessna 150 L · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From General Dewitt Spain Airport (M01) to General Dewitt Spain Airport (M01)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA19CA543
- 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
- N21979
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From General Dewitt Spain Airport (M01), Memphis, TNTo General Dewitt Spain Airport (M01), Memphis, TN
- Aircraft age
- About 46 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
- Landing
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- 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
The student pilot reported that, during landing, she flared the airplane early and that it then skipped on the runway during touchdown. The airplane drifted right, and the flight instructor then took the flight controls, but the airplane continued right. The airplane then lifted off about midfield, spun, and came to rest in grass right of the runway.
The flight instructor reported that he was a new instructor. He added that, while the student was landing, the approach was high and slow as the airplane crossed the threshold, that the student flared "very high," and that he attempted to instruct her on how to recover, but she unexpectedly "pitched [the airplane] up further." He took control of the airplane, applied full power, retracted the flaps, and attempted a go-around. He added that the airplane was struggling to stay airborne and that he was concerned that it might impact some construction cranes beyond the end of the runway, so he turned right, and the airplane impacted the ground right of the runway.
The airplane sustained substantial damage to the left wing and engine mounts.
The instructor reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The student pilot's improper landing flare and the flight instructor's delayed remedial action during landing, which resulted in a loss of airplane control and impact with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA19CA543
- Event ID
- 20190912X15638
- Case number
- GAA19CA543
- 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: 7780ff5884a0f6d0d924a14bb8841dff5148686337604f07d26a6d2827e38f83; retrieved 2026-09-16T10:03:15.585Z.