CEN21LA158 · Cessna 150H
Cessna 150H · Accident: collision with terrain/object (non-CFIT) during takeoff
From an unrecorded airport to Sulphur Springs Municipal Airport (SLR)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN21LA158
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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 150H
- 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
- N50326
- Operator
- Thompson Arthur W
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Sulphur Springs Municipal Airport (SLR), Sulphur Springs, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 53 years (built 1968)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Collision with terrain/object (non-CFIT)
- 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
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that while performing a soft and short field takeoff, he allowed the airplane to drift left to avoid crawfish chimneys on the grass runway. Immediately after the wheels left the ground the left wing impacted a windsock. The pilot continued to climb to about 30 ft above the ground at which time the airplane’s left wing lost lift and began to turn towards nearby trees. The pilot elected to land and during the landing the nose gear dropped, dug into the soft ground, and collapsed. The airplane subsequently nosed over and came to rest inverted. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the rudder and the right wing. The pilot reported there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. The pilot reported he was aware of the crawfish chimneys and normally they would have been removed before the flight, but the tractor used for that purpose was not working. He said he should not have flown until the runway was cleared and paid more attention to the airplane’s alignment on the runway.
Probable cause
The pilot’s decision to takeoff with known obstacles on the runway and his subsequent failure to avoid the windsock on takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN21LA158
- Event ID
- 20210314102754
- Case number
- CEN21LA158
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- 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, cause areas. 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: c524858dfb0d519efe4b18651eb45dfe34d45fcb640991e663bf4234f30a6d11; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:49:11.433Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: destination. SLR is Sulphur Springs Municipal Airport; the Texas city is spelled Sulphur Springs, not 'Sulpher'.