WPR21FA298 · Cessna 150 F
Cessna 150 F · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin while maneuvering
From Redlands Municipal Airport (REI) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR21FA298
- 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
- 2 · 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 F
- 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
- N8520G
- Operator
- Cameron LeClaire
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Redlands Municipal Airport (REI), Redlands, CATo 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
- Maneuvering · low-altitude flying
- 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
- Aerodynamic stall/spin
- 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 commercial pilot and passenger completed several takeoffs and landings in the airport traffic pattern. They then departed to another airport, where they completed two takeoffs and landings. Shortly after turning onto the downwind leg of the traffic pattern before the third landing, at an altitude about 300 ft above ground level, the airplane entered a steep turn to the left and descended nose- and left-wing-low to ground contact.
A postaccident fire ensued that thermally damaged the fuselage and wings. Examination of the airframe and engine revealed no mechanical failures or malfunctions that would have precluded normal operation.
The mother of the passenger reported that her son and the pilot were good friends. Her son had just purchased the airplane and was excited to learn how to fly. Review of flight track information indicated that the airplane’s altitude on the downwind leg of the traffic patterns throughout the flight was generally around 400 to 500 ft above ground level, and the airplane’s lateral distances from the runway during each pattern varied. Whether the pilot or passenger was controlling the airplane at the time of the accident could not be determined. Given the lack of mechanical anomalies, witness statements, and the orientation of the wreckage, the circumstances of the accident are consistent with an exceedance of the airplane’s critical angle of attack while maneuvering at low altitude in the airport traffic pattern, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall, loss of control, and impact with terrain.
Probable cause
The pilot’s exceedance of the airplane’s critical angle of attack while maneuvering in the airport traffic pattern, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall and loss of control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR21FA298
- Event ID
- 20210730103592
- Case number
- WPR21FA298
- 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: e5c7aa199fef5ad79fd384ed8682986a39c05ffcdf152f50bbe5a81bffa429d4; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:32:34.485Z.