CHI99LA133 · Piper PA-28-161
Piper PA-28-161 · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Dupage Airport (DPA) to Morris Municipal Airport James R. Washburn field (C09)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI99LA133
- 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
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- 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
Piper PA-28-161
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N38968
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dupage Airport (DPA), West Chicago, ILTo Morris Municipal Airport James R. Washburn field (C09), IL
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- Landing
- First occurrenceThe 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 on ground/water
- 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
- Pilot in command › Directional control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
In a written statement, the pilot reported, 'Upon reaching Morris (C09) the windsock indicated the winds were from the NE at 8-10 knots. Entered the pattern for runway 36. As the mains were touching down, a strong gust of wind from the right blew the airplane towards the left side of the runway near the runway lights. As the nose wheel touched down the airplane pulled to the left again. In order to avoid hitting several runway lights attempted to guide the airplane between the lights into the grassy area to the left of the runway. As the airplane was being slowed in the grass, a drop off of about 5 feet into a drainage area appeared. The airplane went over the drop off. The nose strut was bent backwards and the prop struck the ground...'. The airport manager reported that the winds at C09 were 090 degrees at 10 knots with gusts to 15 knots. He also reported that one runway light, located approximately 500-1,000 feet from the threshold of runway 36, was damaged. Inspection of the aircraft revealed no mechanical anomalies.
Probable cause
the directional control not maintained by the pilot. Contributing factors were the wind gusts, crosswind and runway light.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI99LA133
- Event ID
- 20001205X00442
- Case number
- CHI99LA133
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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. 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: d1add3b2fd45d4a8f7da7a06e8be672046a37408dee137f309b705707e267013; retrieved 2026-09-22T15:25:06.688Z.