CHI97FA283 · Cessna 177B
Cessna 177B · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Oakland County International Airport (PTK) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI97FA283
- 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
- 1 · 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 177B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 177
- 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
- N34142
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Oakland County International Airport (PTK), Pontiac, MITo 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
- En route · cruise
- 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 encounter with weather
- 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
- Visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC)
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Flight into known adverse weather, initiated
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Crump, MI, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The non-instrument rated private pilot was advised by the FAA Flight Service Station (FSS) specialist that '...there have been IFR ceilings and visibilities through [your] route [of flight].' The specialist told the pilot that the ceiling about 15 miles south of the accident site was varying between 300 and 1,300-feet above the ground. The specialist told the pilot that conditions should start to improve within an hour to an hour-and-a-half after their conversation. The pilot said she'd call back in '...a half hour or so.' There was no record of the return telephone call by the pilot. About 2-hours later, the pilot contacted approach control and reported the airplane was level at 2,500-feet above mean sea level (msl). About 12 minutes later the pilot asked the controller if she could climb to 5,500- feet msl. The controller suggested she climb the airplane to 6,500-feet msl due to her northwesterly heading. The pilot advised the controller she would climb the airplane to 4,500-feet msl. Another pilot reported (PIREP) instrument meteorological conditions at 5,000-feet msl to the controller. About 4-minutes after the PIREP the pilot of the accident airplane requested a climb to 6,500-feet msl. The controller approved the climb. About a minute later the controller reported hearing a distress call from an unknown source, 'Help me. Help me.' Witnesses reported seeing the airplane exit the clouds in a steep, pitched down attitude. They reported the airplane's right wing disintegrated as it banked to the left. The airplane was destroyed during an in-flight breakup and collision with trees and the ground. No anomalies were found with the airframe, control system or engine that would have prevented flight.
Probable cause
Continued flight by the non-instrument rated pilot into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) and her failure to maintain control of the airplane, due to spatial disorientation. Related factors were the low ceiling, and the pilot's lack of instrument flight capabilities.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI97FA283
- Event ID
- 20001208X08799
- Case number
- CHI97FA283
- 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: 9f3d939b8967d1ef24ea32f1bb56dcab86d2458bb3da82d13ad4ae6f9396f3ca; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:49:54.912Z.