CHI96FA152 · Cessna 340A
Cessna 340A · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Dupage Airport (DPA) to Waukegan National Airport (UGN)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI96FA152
- 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
- 0 · 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 340A
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 340
- 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
- N225BA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dupage Airport (DPA), West Chicago, ILTo Waukegan National Airport (UGN)
- 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
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, uncontrolled
- Pilot in command › Visual/aural detection
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was being vectored for an ILS approach when he activated the runway edge lighting. He said he saw the lights as he was being vectored to the final approach course. While on final approach he extended the landing gear and illuminated the landing lights. The lights caused a cockpit glare and he turned them off. As the airplane was passing through 500 feet above ground, he turned the landing lights on a second time. He said he saw a big glow and turned the lights off a second time. After he did this he said he saw nothing. The airplane collided with the ground and MASLR light stand. It was found about 1 hour and 15 minutes after the ground collision. A searcher said the visibility was about 400 feet. The pilot said he was aware of a NOTAM about the inoperative VASI, REIL, and Medium Intensity Approach Lighting System and Runway Alignment Indicator (MASLR). An FAA CAMI optometrist was told the circumstance's surrounding the accident. He said what the pilot experienced was a '...classic case of flash blindness.' Information he provided showed the pilot would have a blind gap in his visual field under circumstances he encountered.
Probable cause
the pilot's inability to maintain visual contact with the runway environment due to 'flash blindness' when he turned on the airplane's landing light, and his subsequent inability to regain control of the airplane after turning off the landing light due to his loss of night vision. A factor was the bright light condition encountered by the pilot.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI96FA152
- Event ID
- 20001208X05703
- Case number
- CHI96FA152
- 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: 1c1413544869730a2ae8a4d64128d795576a87fb05acbf785fb57459c59f1894; retrieved 2026-09-21T12:45:35.197Z.