NYC99FA085 · Cessna 310N
Cessna 310N · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Addington Field / Elizabethtown Regional Airport (EKX) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC99FA085
- 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
- 2 · 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
Cessna 310N
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 310
- 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
- N4159Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Addington Field / Elizabethtown Regional Airport (EKX), Elizabethtown, KYTo not recorded
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Aircraft control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was destroyed during a multi-engine instructional flight, when it impacted terrain while maneuvering after takeoff. The two pilots had flown together the previous day, as well as earlier that same day. During the accident flight, the airplane was observed flying low. The engine noise stopped, then started up again. The airplane entered a steep bank, 'cartwheeled,' then rapidly nosed down into a wet, untilled cornfield. Propeller blades exhibited slight s-bending, some minor leading-edge damage, and light chordwise scoring. The landing gear drive mechanism indicated that the landing gear was down, while wing flap actuator chain positions indicated the flaps were extended 8 to 10 degrees. The flight instructor had about 1,809 hours of total flight time, 264 hours of multi-engine time, and 603 hours as a flight instructor, with 24 hours being in multi-engine airplanes. In addition, he had accumulated about 32 hours in the accident airplane, and 10 hours instructing in the accident airplane, which was acquired 3 months earlier. A notepad found among the wreckage listed the procedures for an engine failure, and also for a Vmc demonstration.
Probable cause
The flight instructor's failure to maintain control of the airplane. A factor was the flight instructor's inexperience instructing in the accident airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC99FA085
- Event ID
- 20001205X00545
- Case number
- NYC99FA085
- 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: 6a94eafb868ec3435ad0aa267bc25b6f0d32f8ebf995c706f92108b992475a10; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:10:15.380Z.