CHI97LA304 · Luscombe 8A
Luscombe 8A · Accident: in flight collision with object on approach
From Napoleon Airport (3NP) to Shamrock Field (6G8)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI97LA304
- 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
Luscombe 8A
- Aircraft type
- Luscombe 8
- 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
- N1269K
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Napoleon Airport (3NP), NAPOLEAN, MITo Shamrock Field (6G8)
- 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 · VFR pattern final
- 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 object
- 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
- Wire, transmission
- 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
- Object › Wire, transmission
- Pilot in command › Altitude/clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Visual lookout, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was part of a group of pilots that had been flying their airplanes to various airports on the day of the accident. The four pilots departed in their airplanes for Shamrock Field, Brooklyn, Michigan, where they planned to refuel. They flew in a loose formation with each airplane having 1 to 1.5 miles separation. The four pilots were in communication via their airplane's radios. The first airplane to arrive at the field made an approach to runway 1. The pilot of that airplane reported he saw the accident airplane turning from base leg to final for runway 19. He reported that the accident airplane was low on the horizon. The airplane that was landing on runway 1 bounced on landing, and the pilot did a go-around. The accident pilot acknowledged radio calls concerning the go-around and continued the approach for landing. However, the airplane impacted high tension powerline wires located about 1,490 feet from the approach end of the runway. The powerline towers were about 110 feet high. No anomalies with either the airframe or engine were found during examination of the airplane.
Probable cause
failure of the pilot to see-and-avoid the transmission wires (inadequate visual lookout, and failing to maintain sufficient altitude and clearance from the obstruction).
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI97LA304
- Event ID
- 20001208X08824
- Case number
- CHI97LA304
- 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: 2b99a601b7c0f636d45477d279cc54796c38c2f012800889af2634923ff38ec9; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:48:12.106Z.