ERA24LA182 · Cessna 150L
Cessna 150L · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Dutchess County Airport (POU) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA24LA182
- 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 150L
- 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
- N150RZ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dutchess County Airport (POU), Poughkeepsie, NYTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 50 years (built 1974)
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot was performing a solo, cross-country flight. As he approached his destination airport, he checked the weather and reported that there were “no winds.” He set up for an approach to runway 3 since another airplane in the traffic pattern had completed an approach to the same runway. He flew the final approach at 70 mph. As he crossed the runway threshold, the airplane was about 5 feet to the right of centerline. He attempted to correct with left rudder; however, the airplane continued to drift to the right. He was no longer over the runway surface, so he elected to perform a go-around. He added full throttle and pushed on the yoke. The stall warning horn immediately activated, the airplane lost all lift, rotated to the left, and collided with the ground. The left wing hit the ground first, followed by the nose. The pilot egressed the airplane with minor injuries. An inspector with the Federal Aviation Administration reported substantial damage to both wings and the forward fuselage. The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. Airport surveillance video captured the event and was consistent with the pilot’s account. Although the pilot reported calm wind, recorded weather at the airport before and immediately after the accident indicated a gusting left crosswind.
Probable cause
The student pilot’s failure to maintain airplane control during a go-around attempt in a gusting left crosswind, resulting in an aerodynamic stall and collision with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA24LA182
- Event ID
- 20240416194103
- Case number
- ERA24LA182
- 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: 5c4acf92e28f2edca4987d5f8a872e01ab13d5dd753ec5f5b4600d35b9e7ef76; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:40:45.933Z.