CHI97LA154 · Cessna 340A
Cessna 340A · Accident: undershoot on approach
From F28 · El Reno, OK to Fort Wayne International Airport (FWA)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI97LA154
- 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
- 0 · 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 340A
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 340
- 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
- N171DB
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From F28 · El Reno, OKTo Fort Wayne International Airport (FWA), IN
- 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
- 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
- Undershoot
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Decision height, not complied with
- Pilot in command › Diverted attention
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While flying his ILS approach with 1 mile visibility and a 200 foot ceiling, the pilot was able to see the runway lights to the right side of the airplane upon reaching decision height, but chose a missed approach. The second approach resulted in the same conditions. On the third approach, the pilot requested a radar surveillance approach coupled with the ILS approach for glide slope information. The pilot stated 'I fixed my eyes on the runway and inadvertently descended below the glide path and landed short of the runway.' No discrepancies were discovered with the Nav #1 or Nav #2 instrumentation regarding the ILS centering, deflection and sensitivity.
Probable cause
the pilot did not comply with the decision height and his attention was diverted from his cockpit scan. The factors involved were the weather conditions were at landing minimums and a flight to his destination alternate was not performed.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI97LA154
- Event ID
- 20001208X08072
- Case number
- CHI97LA154
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1997-06-03.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 0ae12d1ade0038a6b3771b242716300a59daae42236b073af398476681e5c1ea; retrieved 2026-09-22T19:31:31.713Z.