CHI94FA080 · Cessna 320F
Cessna 320F · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water on approach
From East Texas Regional Airport (GGG) to Goshen Municipal Airport (GSH)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI94FA080
- 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
- 1 · 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna 320F
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 320
- 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
- N618X
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From East Texas Regional Airport (GGG), Longview, TXTo Goshen Municipal Airport (GSH)
- 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
- Approach · IFR final approach
- 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
- In flight collision with terrain/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 › Flight into adverse weather, continued
- Pilot in command › Visual lookout, not possible
- Window, flight compartment window/windshield › Ice
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE AIRPLANE BROKE OUT OF THE CLOUDS ON THE VOR APPROACH TO RUNWAY 9 WITH THE WINDSHIELD COVERED BY ICE WHICH LIMITED THE FORWARD VISIBILITY. THE PILOT ELECTED TO CONTINUE THE APPROACH FOR LANDING; HOWEVER, HE WAS UNABLE TO ACQUIRE A VISUAL SIGHTING OF THE RUNWAY OR RUNWAY LIGHTS. THE PILOT-RATED PASSENGER REPORTED THAT THE AIRPLANE DESCENDED BELOW MDA. THE AIRPLANE IMPACTED THE TERRAIN 1/2 MI WEST OF AND 200 FT RIGHT OF THE CENTER LINE OF RUNWAY 9. ICE WAS NOTED ON THE LEADING EDGE OF THE VERTICAL STABILIZER THE DAY AFTER THE ACCIDENT.
Probable cause
the pilot-in-command's continued operation with known deficiencies in equipment. Factors were ice on the windshield and the pilot-in-commands visual outlook not possible.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI94FA080
- Event ID
- 20001206X00720
- Case number
- CHI94FA080
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1994-02-09.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 0a3ad24e3ce0662c1170303a303b417ea2c9024825c0f64e1d33fbe7b58740bf; retrieved 2026-09-21T00:15:10.786Z.