CHI96LA130 · Cessna 177B
Cessna 177B · Accident: in flight collision with object while maneuvering
From H41 · Mexico, MO to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI96LA130
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Cessna 177B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 177
- 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
- N19884
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From H41 · Mexico, MOTo 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
- In flight collision with object
- 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
- Wire, transmission (marked)
- 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, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Impairment(alcohol)
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane collided with electrical power lines that were about 700 feet downstream from a dam and about 125 feet above water. The surviving passenger stated that he and the pilot had consumed some beer at his home. After consuming the beer, the passenger said they went to a local restaurant and lounge remaining there until about 0130. The passenger said he and the pilot left the restaurant with two friends that they had met at the restaurant. One of the friends bought a 12 pack of beer en route to the airport. The pilot and three passengers flew for about an hour before descending near a dam. The passenger said the pilot told him he wanted to get a closer look at the dam. Also, the passenger said that before the airplane crashed, he saw the dam above the airplane's front window, then he heard the airplane hit something and saw sparks. Toxicology tests at the FAA CAMI laboratory showed the pilot had ethanol levels of 130 mg/dl in blood, 135 mg/dl in vitreous fluid, and 179 mg/dl in urine.
Probable cause
the pilot's impairment of judgment and performance due to alcohol, and his failure to maintain altitude/clearance from the power transmission wires. Darkness, restricting the pilot's ability to see-and-avoid the transmission line, was a related factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI96LA130
- Event ID
- 20001208X05532
- Case number
- CHI96LA130
- 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: ee269365ac43e208085978a7b0d2791635f4869216b6dd6f709bca29f33dca50; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:23:09.567Z.