According to the commercial pilot, who was also a flight instructor, the purpose of the flight was to fly the Cessna 150H from Joseph Y. Resnick Airport (N89) in Ellenville, New York, to Shelbyville Municipal Airport (KGEZ) in Indiana, following the purchase of the airplane by the pilot-rated passenger.
The commercial pilot was in the right seat and the pilot-rated passenger was in the left seat. The pilot-rated passenger had a private pilot certificate, however he did not possess a medical certificate.
The passenger performed the takeoff with 10° of flaps for “extra lift to get us away from the ground,” he told investigators.
The airplane lifted off with about 1,000 feet of the 3,839 foot-long runway remaining and climbed “fine” until it reached about 100 feet above ground level. At that point, the airplane would no longer continue to climb.
With mountains approaching, the commercial pilot took control of the airplane and looked for a place to land. The stall warning horn sounded, and the nose was lowered to maintain flying airspeed.
As the airplane approached two sets of power lines, he pitched up to clear the first set of wires, and once clear, he cut power to the engine and raised the flaps. The airplane dropped about 30 feet and crashed onto the roadway. The airplane came to a stop and the pilots exited the airplane.
The commercial pilot sustained minor injuries, while the passenger was not injured.
The wreckage came to rest on a wooded embankment at the side of a roadway. The airplane sustained structural damage to both wings, the fuselage, and the empennage.
Flight planning information was provided by the pilots during the investigation.
They reported that the airplane’s weight at takeoff was 1,595 pounds and the maximum allowable takeoff weight was 1,600 pounds.
They computed the pressure altitude to be 1,934 feet.
Textron reported that the takeoff roll under the reported conditions would be about 490 feet and the expected climb rate would be about 640 feet per minute, however no climb performance data is available for the 10° flap setting.
The Cessna 150H Owner’s Manual addresses takeoffs with 10° flaps: “Normal and obstacle clearance takeoffs are performed with flaps up. The use of 10° will shorten the ground run approximately 10%, but this advantage is lost in the climb to a 50-foot obstacle. Therefore the use of 10° flap is reserved for minimum ground runs or for takeoff from soft or rough fields with no obstacles ahead.”
Probable Cause: Both pilots’ decision to perform the takeoff near maximum gross weight with 10° of flaps, contrary to the owner’s manual procedure, which resulted in the airplane’s degraded climb performance approaching high terrain.
To download the final report. Click here. This will trigger a PDF download to your device.
This August 2022 accident report is provided by the National Transportation Safety Board. Published as an educational tool, it is intended to help pilots learn from the misfortunes of others.
So, the “Lessons Learned” from this debacle include:
Sounds like the airplane performed exactly how the POH said it would with 10 degrees of flaps extended…
If you retract the flaps quickly, at slow speed, the plane is going to “drop”. Not sure what they were expecting to happen…
The old saying “Failure to plan is planning to fail…” proved to be true.
Folks need to be careful when mixing their own ‘tactics, techniques and procedures’ with guidance provided by the manufacturer…or the FAA.
Since Cessna doesn’t publish any guidance specific to the 150; the abort point determination “Rules of Thumb” for short runways recommended by the FAA include:
For “unobstructed runways”:
The airplane should have reached @ 70 percent of its rotation/takeoff speed at 50 percent of the calculated takeoff distance….NOT “runway remaining”.
For “obstructed runways”; it’s 70 percent of takeoff speed by the time you’ve traveled 30 percent of runway available.
These are available at: https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/files/2022-01/Aircraft%20Performance%20%26%20Calculations.pdf
Change 1: My mistake.
For Obstructed runways; it’s “…30 percent of available takeoff distance”, not “runway” available.
Takeoff distance available (TODA) is the distance to accelerate from brake release, past lift-off, to the start of the takeoff climb.
TODA includes the entire distance that can be utilized for takeoff, including the runway itself, plus any clearway beyond the runway.
That means during take-off, the aircraft may have additional distance needed to accelerate to the speed required (OCS, Vx…) to clear any obstacles in its flight path.
Curran
Rotation was about 2,300ft past Textron’s calculated rotation point. If you can’t accelerate properly, how are you going to climb? An abort at even 1,000ft past the calculated rotation point would have given about 2,300ft in which to stop from a speed apparently less than rotation speed.
I’m sort of lost here. What did they do wrong? Regardless of whether they were on a short soft field or a hard surface runway at 100ft AGL looks to me as if the only thing they didn’t do was raise the flaps. When should you raise flaps 100 ft doesn’t sound like it’s that high that the plane couldn’t climb. What if the airport was 100ft higher are you saying the plane would never got off the ground.
My first thought was it taking 2,800 ft to get airborne.!! The POH indicates , at gross and at 2,000 ft, the ground roll should be about 900 ft.
They should have aborted the takeoff at the mid-point, about 1,800 ft, and determine why it took so much runway.
Was the weight correct ? Did they do a full power static rpm check.? It sound to me like the engine was not producing full power.
There is no mention of them checking the log books, current annual, service times.
The prior owner said that the aircraft had only flown 1 hr in the last year..!!
So, did these guys just hop in and fly it out ?
Now it’s scrap/ salvage..!!
At a minimum, it appears that they did no form of pre-buy inspection of the aircraft by an A&P IA, to verify that the aircraft was airworthy.!
The takeoff run was 3x the POH data,[ 900 ft for the conditions ]. They should have aborted the takeoff at the 1,500 ft point, allowing a lot of runway to stop. [ a 3,800 ft runway]
The POH states a takeoff with 10 deg flaps is only to be used for soft or short fields.
It also states that the climb will be less than the POH data, but it will climb , assume a speed of Vx, 60mph, or higher.
What was the load that took the weight to max? Cargo, I assume? On a delivery flight? In my life’s experience I’ve known many instances in which men (mainly, women are more cautious) who disregard published specs and substitute their own judgment which results in bad outcomes. Racing engine building comes to mind. Installing a big blower on a factory stock little V8 is guaranteed to blow the bottom end. Tacking too hard on a Sunfish toy sailboat cost the life of a friend when its sail went flat on the ocean and he couldn’t make it swimming back to shore (he weighted around 400 lbs). The mentality is factory engineers are stupid and don’t know what the heck they’re talking about. Yup! Works for me. Not! These two pilots are lucky to have escaped with their lives. Hope they profited from the experience. Regards/J
The C150 has a very low load capacity.
From the POH
gross wt. 1,600
empty wt. 1,111
load cap. 489
full fuel 152 [26 gal] [ 3.5 to 4.5 hrs ]
pax. load 327 [ 2 x 163 lb folks !! ]
[ a lot of pilots weight 180-200 lb….a no-go in a C150, or C152.!!]
Which is why it is no longer used for primary training…American pilots are heavy.!
I took most of my initial training in 150s back when a 150H was a nearly new airplane. I think the NTSB missed the boat on this one, because a 150H will climb just fine with 10° of flaps extended, assuming that it is not overloaded and that the engine is running properly. My guess is that the computed weight was erroneous, but more importantly, the pilots (since both seemed to be flying the airplane) got “hill fright” and tried to make the airplane climb at a much lower speed than Vx. Get behind the power curve with almost any low powered trainer, and the old joke comes into play: to make the airplane go up, pull back—to make the airplane go down, pull back some more.
Rode in a 150 once with a friend for a little night flying. With the omni rear window I was amazed that seemingly flying forever i could still see the airport behind us!….lol