CHI97FAMS1 · Cessna T210N
Cessna T210N · Accident: missing aircraft en route
From General Mitchell International Airport (MKE) to Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport (SDF)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI97FAMS1
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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 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
- N7134J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From General Mitchell International Airport (MKE), Milwaukee, WITo Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport (SDF), Louisville, KY
- 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
- En route · descent
- 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
- Missing aircraft
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The radar data observed N7134J flying on a southerly course over Lake Michigan at 3000 MSL. Weather in the area was observed to be; 25,000 feet overcast; visibility 3 miles in mist; temperature -1 degrees C; dew point -2 degrees C. An AIRMET called for icing and severe turbulence in that area at the time of the accident. There was no communication between the airplane and ATC after canceling their IFR flight plan shortly after departure. The flight path revealed an approximately 90 degree right turn towards the west with a descent from 3,100 feet MSL to 1,900 feet MSL within 14 seconds when radar contact was lost. To date, the entire wreckage was never located in Lake Michigan. Both pilots' autopsies revealed massive injuries to the head, trunk, and extremities; these injuries indicate a fairly high-energy impact.
Probable cause
Undetermined.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI97FAMS1
- Event ID
- 20001208X07384
- Case number
- CHI97FAMS1
- 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: 6c03c8e69278cdf988fcaa4d8c0f00cb0d64594084c3ea13a9cd86fa16c03bb9; retrieved 2026-09-18T13:30:27.499Z.