IAD97FA064 · Cessna 414
Cessna 414 · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Cincinnati Municipal Airport Lunken Field (LUK) to Highland County Airport (HOC)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD97FA064
- 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 414
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 414
- 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
- N13MN
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cincinnati Municipal Airport Lunken Field (LUK), Cincinnati, OHTo Highland County Airport (HOC), OH
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Stall; Tree(s)
- 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 › Airspeed, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Stall, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Witnesses observed the airplane overfly their homes at low altitude in a tight circular pattern. A witness about 1/2 mile from the airport '. . . watched the plane try to make a turn to the left trying to go back west to the Highland County Airport. The plane made a sharp turn, seemed to be having difficulty stabilizing the airplane . . . .' Also, a witness reported that she heard a loud noise, and then she observed an airplane just barely above the trees. The landing gear was down, and the airplane 'kept dipping up and down.' Another witness reported the airplane was 'wobbling left to right,' and then it descended into trees, struck vehicles, came to rest against a tree, and was destroyed by a postcrash fire. A person, who flew with the pilot as a safety pilot on several occasions, reported that the pilot had a habit of making steep close-in turns, from downwind to base, to final; and he noticed 'lack in airspeed management during approach.' Examination of the wreckage did not disclose any preimpact failure of the airplane or engine.
Probable cause
failure of the pilot to maintain adequate airspeed, while maneuvering, which resulted in an advertent stall and collision with trees, vehicles, and the terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD97FA064
- Event ID
- 20001208X07723
- Case number
- IAD97FA064
- 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: 68fef095cbeab3b4c787bdf461436edca3c2f903079a08132ef4e8198c9efa18; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:00:12.284Z.