CEN20FA108 · Cessna 150 M
Cessna 150 M · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN20FA108
- 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 150 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
- N407WJ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 46 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
- Approach · VFR pattern crosswind
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Before the accident, the pilot told the co-owner he planned to perform touch and go maneuvers. Data showed that the airplane departed and conducted one left traffic pattern flight. It could not be determined if the pilot performed a touch-and-go, or a go-around. The airplane then entered a left crosswind, and the last radar target indicated the airplane was at 250 ft above ground level and 125 knots ground speed. There were no witnesses to the accident.
The airplane impacted terrain in a 10° nose-down attitude, and the wreckage path measured about 120 ft in length. No anomalies were noted with the airframe and engine that would have precluded normal operation. Thus, it is likely that the pilot lost control during the initial takeoff climb for reasons that could not be determined based on available evidence.
The pilot’s toxicology tests results revealed he had used marijuana, but none of the available information could be used to determine when that had occurred. As a result, it could not be determined if the pilot’s use of marijuana contributed to the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot’s loss of control during the initial takeoff climb for reasons that could not be determined based on available evidence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN20FA108
- Event ID
- 20200301X22718
- Case number
- CEN20FA108
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2020-02-29.
- API snapshot SHA-256: f37c5e7c74f7253d4b9c04bd21cb069c301d89ac1c1a49991dd08d37df54ea7c; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:12:20.713Z.