BFO96FA032 · Cessna 310R
Cessna 310R · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Philadelphia International Airport (PHL) to FTW · Fort Wayne, IN
Event
- NTSB case
- BFO96FA032
- 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
- 3 · 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 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
- N1269G
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Philadelphia International Airport (PHL), Philadelphia, PATo FTW · Fort Wayne, IN
- 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 · cruise
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was cruising at 8,000 feet in night, IMC conditions, when the pilot requested and received clearance to climb to 10,000 feet. Radar data showed the airplane leveled off at 10,000 feet. Shortly thereafter, it made an abrupt right turn and descended through 8,300 feet, then radar contact was lost. Witnesses near the accident site heard and/or saw the airplane before it crashed. According to them, the engines revved as if the airplane went into a dive or the pilot 'throttled up.' Also, the airplane was reported to be maneuvering before it crashed. Wreckage was located in an open field, scattered over a distance of 550 feet. The horizontal stabilizers and elevators were found near the western end of the wreckage path, 184 feet west of the main impact crater. The left and right wing were found 60 and 101 feet east of the main crater, respectively. Also, the engines had separated from the main wreckage and were found in two craters about 50 feet apart. Examination revealed the horizontal stabilizers had failed down and aft, and the wings had failed downward. The airspeed indicator was found with a reading of over 260 knots. The airplane's never exceed speed was 227 KCAS. About 12 miles north of the accident site, the weather was in part: 2400 feet overcast with 7 miles visibility; witnesses reported that snow was falling. The pilot of another aircraft reported light icing conditions between 4,000 and 11,500 feet.
Probable cause
the pilot's in-flight loss of aircraft control for undetermined reason(s), which resulted in the airplane exceeding its design stress limitations and an in-flight breakup.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record BFO96FA032
- Event ID
- 20001207X04955
- Case number
- BFO96FA032
- 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 1995-12-21.
- API snapshot SHA-256: afe508adcdec9f4c5ebd1d4ace992d20bc2837d5de4654b13d3c9317cd20f747; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:29:14.870Z.