CEN23FA077 · Cessna 150H
Cessna 150H · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Lincoln Airport (LNK) to Lincoln Airport (LNK)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN23FA077
- 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 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
- N22859
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lincoln Airport (LNK), Lincoln, NETo Lincoln Airport (LNK), Lincoln, NE
- Aircraft age
- About 55 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
- Approach
- 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 power plant
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor and student pilot flew a visual arrival to a non-towered airport in dark night visual meteorological conditions. Flight track information revealed that the airplane approached the airport and its last recorded position was consistent with a left downwind entry to the traffic pattern. The wreckage was located about 1.2 miles south of the runway, where the airplane impacted a farm field in a near wings-level and moderate nose-down attitude. Examination of the airplane and engine revealed no evidence of a mechanical failure or malfunction that would have precluded normal operation. The carburetor heat control was in the full forward (off) position at the accident site and the wing flaps were retracted. The weather conditions around the time of the accident were conducive to the development of serious carburetor icing at cruise power settings. The propeller spinner and both propeller blades exhibited minimal rotational damage, and the airplane’s impact attitude was consistent with a loss of control. The cockpit was equipped with flood ‘strip’ lights, which the flight instructor had previously reported could make viewing the in-set instruments in the cockpit more difficult at night. It is likely that the pilots were maneuvering to land before the accident occurred and would have been operating the airplane at a reduced engine power setting. The reduced power, lack of carburetor heat, and the atmospheric conditions present at the time would have significantly increased the engine’s susceptibility to the development of carburetor icing, and resulted in a loss of engine power. Given the lack of flight track information, and witnesses, whether the accident occurred during the approach for the first landing or during a subsequent traffic pattern/landing could not be determined. The extent to which the dark night conditions, airplane interior lighting, and lack of cultural lighting in the vicinity of the airport may have contributed to the outcome also could not be determined.
Probable cause
The flight instructor’s failure to maintain control after a loss of engine power due to carburetor icing while maneuvering for forced landing in dark night visual meteorological conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN23FA077
- Event ID
- 20230112106566
- Case number
- CEN23FA077
- 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 2023-01-12.
- API snapshot SHA-256: fc165a0c18aea82a685675a8da4e4c3ce4221c8742acc4f3384e0853d9eacf9c; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:55:59.004Z.