CHI96FA353 · Cessna 195
Cessna 195 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From West Memphis Municipal Airport (AWM) to Creve Coeur Airport (1H0)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI96FA353
- 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
- 4 · 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 195
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 195
- 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
- N195WR
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From West Memphis Municipal Airport (AWM), West Memphis, ARTo Creve Coeur Airport (1H0), Creve Coeur, MO
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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 › Flight into known adverse weather, attempted
- Weather condition › Thunderstorm
- Wing, spar › Overload
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot had telephoned the Jonesboro FSS and was advised by the briefer 'moderate turbulence... icing... visibilities one to two with thunderstorms and rain.... VFR flight is not recommended.' The pilot reported 'I'm gonna file that way and then I'll go just as close as I can get and when it gets bad I'll just shut it down.' Instrument meteorological conditions, severe rain, and thunderstorms were reported by witnesses in the vicinity of the accident site. Several people reported that they heard the sound of the airplane flying overhead at 'a low altitude.' No eyewitnesses were located. The outboard nine feet of the left wing was located approximately 1/4 mile from the main wreckage. Examination of the wing spar fragments and a section of the wing from the vicinity of the left wing fracture revealed 'features typical of overstress separations. Deformation associated with the fracture in the upper and lower spar caps was indicative of a bending overstress separation in the downward direction. No fatigue cracking or other types of progressive deterioration was noted.' Examination of the wreckage revealed no other evidence of preimpact malfunction.
Probable cause
the pilot's decision to fly into known adverse weather which resulted in an overload failure and separation of the left wing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI96FA353
- Event ID
- 20001208X06690
- Case number
- CHI96FA353
- 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: 4cee489aceb6a628bbaff6d75498d143b688468c9c332d82781c29cd0dff7dbe; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:11:01.199Z.