NYC94FA166 · Cessna 310R
Cessna 310R · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Allegheny County Airport (AGC) to Heritage Field (PTW)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC94FA166
- 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 310R
- 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
- N502SB
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Allegheny County Airport (AGC), West Mifflin, PATo Heritage Field (PTW), Pottstown, PA
- 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
- En route · descent
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Design stress limits of aircraft, exceeded
- Pilot in command › Impairment(drugs)
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE AIRPLANE WAS IN A CRUISE DESCENT FROM 9000 TO 7000 FEET AT NIGHT IN VISUAL METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS, WHEN, ACCORDING TO RECORDED RADAR DATA, THE ALTITUDE INCREASED 200 FEET AND THEN RADAR CONTACT WAS LOST AT 7800 FEET. WITNESSES SAW THE AIRPLANE IN A STEEP DESCENT AND HEARD A LOUD WHINE. THE AIRPLANE SUSTAINED INFLIGHT AIRFRAME SEPARATION. DEBRIS WAS SCATTERED OVER A DISTANCE OF ABOUT 1500 FT WITH THE HORIZONTAL STABILIZERS AND ELEVATORS FOUND NEAR THE BEGINNING OF THE WRECKAGE PATH, FOLLOWED BY THE FUSELAGE, AND ENDING WITH THE ENGINES AND PROPELLERS. THE LEFT HORIZONTAL STABILIZER HAD FAILED DOWN AND AFT. THE LEFT WING OUTBOARD OF THE LEFT ENGINE HAD FAILED DOWN AND WAS FOUND 600 FT LEFT OF THE DEBRIS TRAIL. WRINKLES IN TWO DIRECTIONS AND POPPED RIVETS WERE FOUND ON BOTH WINGS. TOXICOLOGY TESTS OF THE PILOT'S BLOOD REVEALED 0.002 UG/ML OF TETRAHYDROCANNABINOL (MARIJUANA) AND 0.011 UG/ML TETRAHYDROCANNABINOL CARBOXYLIC ACID. A TEST OF HIS URINE SHOWED 0.305 UG/ML OF TETRAHYDROCANNABINOL CARBOXYLIC ACID. THE PILOT HAD WORKED A FULL-TIME CONSTRUCTION JOB DURING THE DAY, AND HE HAD BEEN AWAKE FOR ABOUT 19 HOURS.
Probable cause
THE PILOT'S IMPAIRMENT OF JUDGMENT AND PERFORMANCE DUE TO DRUGS, FAILURE TO MAINTAIN CONTROL OF THE AIRPLANE, AND EXCEEDING THE DESIGN STRESS LIMITS OF THE AIRPLANE, WHICH RESULTED IN AN IN-FLIGHT BREAKUP OF THE AIRPLANE. A FACTOR RELATED TO THE ACCIDENT WAS: CONDITIONS CONDUCIVE TO FATIGUE.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC94FA166
- Event ID
- 20001206X02327
- Case number
- NYC94FA166
- 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: 9f98398a50e42b270006605638a1c47c582eb9e18b033077c7b0c108cbf184c5; retrieved 2026-09-21T00:01:27.283Z.