CHI97FA308 · Piper PA-28-235
Piper PA-28-235 · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Drummond Island Airport (DRM) to Livingston County Spencer J. Hardy Airport (OZW)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI97FA308
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-28-235
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N9399W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Drummond Island Airport (DRM), Drummond Island, MITo Livingston County Spencer J. Hardy Airport (OZW), Howell, MI
- 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
- Defining eventThe 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
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The noninstrument-rated pilot departed for a cross-country flight in instrument meteorological conditions (IMC). The airplane was reported missing the following day. Radar data showed the airplane traveling south from the airport about 25 miles over Lake Huron, then turning north before disappearing from radar. The airplane was not located during the initial search but was found about 21 years after it was reported missing in a heavily forested area.
A friend of the pilot stated that, while flying together in IMC, he allowed the pilot to assume control of the airplane three times and that, each time, the pilot experienced vertigo and the friend had to intervene to regain airplane control.
Weather conditions along the flight route included cloud ceilings as low as 400 ft above ground level. It is possible the pilot departed believing he could fly under the cloud ceilings. However, radar data showing the airplane flying south and then turning north before disappearing from radar indicates that the airplane likely encountered weather too adverse for the pilot to navigate through and that the pilot subsequently altered the flight route to find improved weather or an alternate landing location but subsequently crashed the airplane.
Based on available evidence, it could not be determined if the pilot experienced vertigo, spatial disorientation, or controlled flight into terrain due to the low visibility conditions. Given the weather conditions and that the pilot was not instrument rated, he should not have departed in IMC; instead, he should have delayed his departure until the weather conditions improved to allow flight in visual meteorological conditions.
Probable cause
The noninstrument-rated pilot's improper decision to depart in instrument meteorological conditions, which resulted in impact with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI97FA308
- Event ID
- 20001208X08803
- Case number
- CHI97FA308
- 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: 46f07679a1b6fcb05abcd2babc99ed50ad1345072da868ed55c6324a9414ff84; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:49:16.934Z.