ERA24LA134 · Cessna 150 L
Cessna 150 L · Accident: VFR encounter with IMC en route
From Owensboro Daviess County Airport (OWB) to Madisonville Regional Airport (2I0)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA24LA134
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna 150 L
- 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
- N1703Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Owensboro Daviess County Airport (OWB), Owensboro, KYTo Madisonville Regional Airport (2I0), Madisonville, KY
- Aircraft age
- About 53 years (built 1971)
- 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
- En route
- 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
- VFR encounter with IMC
- 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 › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Physical
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot consumed alcohol and attempted a visual flight rules (VFR) cross-country flight over mountainous terrain in night instrument meteorological conditions. During the flight, the airplane had climbed to approximately 1,400 ft above ground level (agl), but the pilot experienced increasing rain intensity and decreasing ceiling heights. He repeatedly descended the airplane to remain below cloud layers and was at an altitude of about 300 ft agl when the airplane collided with trees about 5 miles from his intended diversionary airport. The pilot reported that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions with the airplane.
The FAA Forensic Sciences laboratory performed toxicological testing of specimens from the pilot collected by hospital personnel about 11.5 hours after the accident. Ethanol was detected in blood and serum at levels consistent with a blood alcohol level of 0.23 g/dL at the time of the accident, well above what FAA regulations permit.
Probable cause
The pilot’s decision to attempt a VFR flight in instrument meteorological conditions, which resulted in controlled flight into terrain. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s impairment due to alcohol consumption.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA24LA134
- Event ID
- 20240310193903
- Case number
- ERA24LA134
- 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, coordinates, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2024-03-09.
- API snapshot SHA-256: d047fe0c290a843e98fb40b3628cea4c65f8631ca2ad64c892188ca5db3b931a; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:34:35.839Z.