ERA21LA271 · Cessna 150 H
Cessna 150 H · Accident: collision during takeoff/landing during initial climb
From an unrecorded airport to Greene County Airport (WAY)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA21LA271
- 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
- 0
- 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 H
- 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
- N22307
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Greene County Airport (WAY), Waynesburg, PA
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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 during takeoff/landing
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot and instructor were preparing for the student’s private pilot checkride. After performing takeoffs, landings, and several maneuvers, they decided to perform a landing at a 1,720 ft private grass strip. The landing was uneventful, and the student pilot taxied back and prepared to take off with 10° of flaps. During the takeoff, after the airplane became airborne, and the last recollection the student pilot had was that the airplane was not climbing due to “low airspeed in [the] high heat [and] high humidity.” Subsequently, the airplane impacted the runway about 100 ft from trees at the departure end, which resulted in substantial damage to the fuselage and wings. The student pilot reported that they did not complete performance calculations prior to the takeoff. Takeoff performance calculations based on the takeoff distance chart in the airplane owner’s manual revealed that a ground roll of about 1,022 ft and a takeoff distance of about 1,792 ft was required to clear a 50-ft obstacle at the airplane’s maximum allowable gross weight. The chart (and the checklist procedure) indicated that the maximum performance takeoff was to be performed with the flaps in the retracted position. In addition, the student pilot and the flight instructor stated that there were no mechanical failures or malfunctions of the airplane during the takeoff.
Probable cause
The flight instructor and student pilot’s inadequate preflight performance planning which resulted in a takeoff attempt with insufficient available runway, a loss of control, and impact with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA21LA271
- Event ID
- 20210629103365
- Case number
- ERA21LA271
- 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, 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: 84275342708c1a523802fd72c424c24bf43111f556ef68d5e48284d970b5894b; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:13:49.061Z.