CHI95LA291 · Cessna 140
Cessna 140 · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Oscoda County/Dennis Kauffman Memorial Airport (51M) to Marine City Airport (76G)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI95LA291
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Cessna 140
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 140
- 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
- N76429
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Oscoda County/Dennis Kauffman Memorial Airport (51M)To Marine City Airport (76G), Marine City, MI
- 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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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 › Altitude/clearance, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Impairment(drugs)
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane departed runway 27 and obtained about 10 to 30 feet of vertical clearance with the trees at the end of the airport property. It went into a 60 to 90 degrees angle of bank to the left and leveled out for about 1/4 mile. The airplane went into another ninety degree left bank. The airplane hit trees with the left wing pointing down and landed in an inverted position. Witnesses reported the engine had sounded normal with no sputtering during the flight. Examination of the engine and aircraft failed to reveal any anomalies. The reported local winds were 270 degrees at 11 miles per hour, gusting to 20. The toxicology examination indicated that Chlorpheniramine (0.136 ug/ml) was detected in the blood. This drug is not approved for use while piloting an airplane. Chlorpheniramine is an ingredient in Contact. A witness reported that the pilot had not been feeling well, and that the pilot was lethargic and was just in 'slow motion.' The witness reported that the pilot took one Contact in the morning.
Probable cause
the pilot's impairment of judgement and performance which led to performing a low altitude maneuver with insufficient altitude for recovery. A factor was the tailwind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI95LA291
- Event ID
- 20001207X04214
- Case number
- CHI95LA291
- 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: 58a9867bbfa260185e97ed5ac748f96e9cdc0b59ce0b20ab0c3a76042e6aa8f1; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:39:28.501Z.