CHI97FA027 · Cessna T210N
Cessna T210N · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water on approach
From St Louis Downtown Airport (CPS) to Springfield Branson National Airport (SGF)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI97FA027
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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 T210N
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 210
- 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
- N5083C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From St Louis Downtown Airport (CPS), Cahokia, ILTo Springfield Branson National Airport (SGF)
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- In flight collision with terrain/water
- 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 › Altimeter setting, not corrected
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Springfield, MO, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was on his last flight leg for that evening carrying cancelled bank checks. He was cleared for an Instrument Landing System (ILS) approach to runway 02 to the Sprinfield-Branson Regional Airport by Kansas City Center. The aircraft crashed about a mile short of runway 02 while on the night instrument approach. The weather at the time of the accident was reported as two hundred feet overcast with visibility at one and a quarter mile in mist. Winds were reported at one five zero degrees at nineteen with wind gusts to two four. Altimeter setting was 30.24 inches. The Kollsman window of the altimeter in the aircraft was found after the accident set to 30.50 inches. Kansas City Center transmitted to the pilot 'the new Springfield weather just came out uh has still has two hundred feet overcast visibility uh one and one-quarter mile now and uh mist wind one five zero at one niner gusting to two four altimeter uh is uh three zero two four'. The pilot acknowledged 'three zero two four prompt air five fifty.' The baggage handler, who loaded the airplane before the pilot departed for Springfield, said that the pilot 'looked very tired and fatigued.' The pilot had commenced his workday at approximately 1800 cst the day before the accident.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to set the altimeter to the current setting given by the controller resulting in the aircraft altimeter reading 260 feet higher than the actual aircraft altitude. Factors involved were pilot fatigue, weather conditions at approach minimums, and a tailwind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI97FA027
- Event ID
- 20001208X06999
- Case number
- CHI97FA027
- 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: dca58597e4208faf0fed5f680a269b137788f0747f98092d5c86e70ce68c4aeb; retrieved 2026-09-18T13:33:43.621Z.