CEN21LA335 · Cessna 150F
Cessna 150F · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN21LA335
- 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 150F
- 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
- N7893F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 55 years (built 1966)
- 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 go-around
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane owner and the other pilot met each other at an aviation event just before the accident flight. After a short discussion, the two pilots decided to conduct a local flight in the accident airplane. After takeoff, while on the downwind leg of the traffic pattern, the right seat pilot (non-owner) asked to take the airplane’s controls from the owner (seated in the left seat), and a positive exchange of controls was accomplished. The right seat pilot then flew a low approach over a temporary grass runway with 40° of flaps extended. The right seat pilot did not intend to land; instead, he performed a go-around about 100 ft above the ground with full engine power and carburetor heat in the OFF position. The right seat pilot then attempted to retract the flaps, and he reported the flaps would not retract. The left seat pilot attempted to cycle the flap switch and was unsuccessful in retracting the flaps. Unable to maintain altitude, the right seat pilot performed an off airport landing to a corn field. The airplane impacted the corn field, flipped over, and came to rest inverted. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the engine firewall and engine mount.
Postaccident examination of the airframe and engine, which included testing of the flap system, revealed no evidence of mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. A four-port universal serial bus (USB) power supply adapter was found plugged into a power port located just below the cockpit flap switch. It was undetermined if the adapter conflicted with the operation of the flap switch. Based on available evidence, a reason for the reported flap issue was not determined.
Probable cause
The right seat pilot’s improper decision to perform a low approach with full flaps and the failure of the flaps to retract during the attempted go-around, which resulted in a forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN21LA335
- Event ID
- 20210725103536
- Case number
- CEN21LA335
- 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, 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: 462fd0508b1860ef481e74b55ffb99e6cc0d20d95d912426383388c243dae9c8; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:19:08.863Z.