CEN26LA080 · Cessna 150 M
N3103V Cessna 150 M · Accident: flight control system malfunction/failure on approach
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN26LA080
- 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
- Ongoing
- 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 150 M
- 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
- N3103V
- Operator
- N3103V
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 51 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 pattern final
- 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
- Flight control system malfunction/failure
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On December 21, 2025, about 1342 central standard time, a Cessna 150M, N3103V, was substantially damaged when it was involved in an accident near Prospect Heights, Illinois. The student pilot was not injured. The airplane was operated as a Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91 instructional flight. The student pilot was flying solo. He was returning from the practice area and was on final approach. While making an altitude correction, the student pilot applied engine power and applied slight back pressure on the control yoke. He heard a click and realized the yoke was stuck. He initially applied a “decent amount of force” and was unable to move the control. The stuck control resulted in the airplane beginning to climb while on short final. The pilot then added more force to get the yoke to move, he heard another click and the yoke was released and worked again. He then landed and taxied back without any further issues. Examination afterwards by the pilot and his flight instructor found the support collar at the instrument panel had cracked (see figure below). When the control yoke was moved through its range of motion a certain way, the support collar would cause the yoke to be stuck until aggressive force was applied to free it. Due to the adverse effect on the aircraft’s flight characteristics and the required replacement of the support collar, the airplane sustained substantial damage. The support collar was removed and retained for further examination.
Figure. Support collar for pilot control yoke.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN26LA080
- Event ID
- 20260106202260
- Case number
- CEN26LA080
- 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. 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: 6ae5d5291d626cd9868260709da4cbfb5ad904f0b2742fdd598883501f407497; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:39:13.232Z.