CHI97LA257 · Cessna A188B
Cessna A188B · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water during initial climb
From Johnson Lake Airport (2NE0) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI97LA257
- 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
Cessna A188B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 188
- 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
- N731GE
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Johnson Lake Airport (2NE0)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 137: Agricultural
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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 › Clearance, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said that before takeoff, he loaded the airplane with 130 gallons of water and chemical, placing the airplane near it's maximum restricted operating gross weight of 4,200 pounds. 'The temperature was about 80 degrees with high humidity from rain the night before.' The wind was light out of the west. 'I started my takeoff roll to the north on the grass runway, rolled 1,000 feet, and brought the tail up.' The pilot said he rolled another 500 feet, lowered five degrees of flaps, and started to lift off of the ground. 'The plane settled back down.' The pilot lowered the flaps to 10 degrees and tried to lift off again, but the airplane would not take off. 'The airplane impacted a bank with brush on it at the end of the runway.' Examination of the wreckage revealed no anomalies. The Cessna A188B Owner's Manual states that for airplanes operated in the restricted category, 'Take-off performance at these gross weights is limited, and ideal field elevation, runway, and weather conditions are expected to exist in obtaining satisfactory take-off performance. Operation from fields in excess of 1,000 above sea level, rough or soft runways, adverse runway gradients, high outside air temperature, turbulence, etc., may prevent a safe take-off at these gross weights. All of these things must be considered by the operator.' The manual also states that, 'The optimum flap setting for take-off at the maximum restricted category gross weight with dispersal equipment installed is 10-degrees.'
Probable cause
the pilot not maintaining clearance from the bushes. Factors contributing to this accident were the pilot's inadequate preparation prior to the takeoff attempt, his changing flap positions during the takeoff run which degraded the airplane's performance further, and the bushes.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI97LA257
- Event ID
- 20001208X08584
- Case number
- CHI97LA257
- 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: 335ed0cfa03024e85f5355d169612e48e521415a8ea5b4bd43f8e449ff6d37a2; retrieved 2026-09-22T18:50:37.101Z.