CHI97LA211 · Waco UPF-7
Waco UPF-7 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water while maneuvering
From Abraham Lincoln Capital Airport (SPI) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI97LA211
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Waco UPF-7
- Aircraft type
- Waco UPF-7
- 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
- N30136
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Abraham Lincoln Capital Airport (SPI)To not recorded
- 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
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Altitude/clearance, not maintained
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Springfield, IL, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said that he was performing an airshow routine with another airplane. He had just come across the top of a '1/2 cuban eight' maneuver, and visually located the other airplane, as he was maneuvering for an opposing pass. He stated, 'Descending back to show center, I lost sight of the other airplane due to my top wing being in my line of sight.' The pilot visually searched for the other airplane. He said, 'Due to the time of day, haze and color of the other airplane, I didn't pick him up. At one instant, something caught my eye. I glanced up, and the next instant, touched down on a slight descent at about 160 miles per hour. The long rigid [landing] gear collapsed easily. I pulled the airplane back into the air, made a slight right turn to line up on runway 13 and landed.' Examination of the airplane revealed no anomalies.
Probable cause
failure of the pilot to maintain safe altitude/clearance from the terrain. Factors relating to this accident were: the hazy weather condition, the resultant difficulty in keeping the other airplane in sight, and the pilot's diverted attention, while looking for the other airplane during the airshow routine.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI97LA211
- Event ID
- 20001208X08326
- Case number
- CHI97LA211
- 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: de66c8283711b45f1427c7e9806c9e6171f851019ce280f3f4e195fca991246d; retrieved 2026-09-22T19:10:18.547Z.