CHI97FA056 · Cessna 210N
Cessna 210N · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From TD2 · Troy, MI to Wittman Regional Airport (OSH)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI97FA056
- 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
- 2 · 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 210N
- 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
- N29WW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From TD2 · Troy, MITo Wittman Regional Airport (OSH), Oshkosh, WI
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
At 1755 local time, two instrument rated pilots departed on a night flight from Troy, MI, to Oshkosh, WI. At 1801, they were cleared to climb from 3,000 to 5,000 feet. About 6 minutes later, while cruising about 4 miles south-southwest of Pontiac, MI, radio and radar contact with the airplane were lost. A search was initiated, and wreckage of the airplane was found in the vicinity (near Highland, MI). Investigation determined that the outboard twelve feet of the right wing, and portions of the right elevator and right elevator trim tab separated from the airplane in-flight. Examination of the airframe, engine, and components failed to reveal preexistent anomalies. Weather forecasts and reports indicated turbulence, and temperatures above freezing at the cruising altitude. No preexisting pathology or toxicological findings were found that would have had an effect on the pilots' performance.
Probable cause
in-flight breakup of the airplane for undetermined reason(s).
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI97FA056
- Event ID
- 20001208X07261
- Case number
- CHI97FA056
- 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: 24b1741f37f4db263a19d1f51c943e9796f9523060c651f71c1829e194c23839; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:03:31.761Z.