WPR20LA279 · Cessna 150 L
Cessna 150 L · Accident: security/criminal event
From Jefferson County International Airport (0S9) to Quillayute, WA
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's fatalities. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR20LA279
- 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 Narrative disagrees
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
- N11513
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Jefferson County International Airport (0S9), Port Townsend, WATo Quillayute, WA
- Aircraft age
- About 47 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
- Unknown
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
- Security/criminal 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
- Not determined › Not determined
- Personnel issues › Miscellaneous
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Law enforcement personnel reported that several witnesses observed an airplane flying low and circling around a housing complex and nearby woods for a short time before it crashed into the woods. The airplane was located the next day in wooded terrain. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the wings and fuselage. The student pilot was seriously injured and unable to make a statement as to the circumstances of the accident before he succumbed to his injuries.
The owner/operator of the airplane reported that surveillance video revealed that the student pilot entered his building on the evening of the accident and took the logbooks and keys to the airplane. The owner reported to the county Sheriff’s Office that the airplane was stolen as the pilot did not have permission to be in the building or to operate the airplane.
Probable cause
The airplane’s descent into trees and subsequent impact with terrain for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR20LA279
- Event ID
- 20200819X80407
- Case number
- WPR20LA279
- 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, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2020-08-19.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 749e1e05b7e1d5774c2107d1e4f65c91fa8e96432288eb75db903e4b077ea977; retrieved 2026-09-16T12:50:54.334Z.