CHI98FA031 · Piper PA-34-200T
Piper PA-34-200T · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Dupage Airport (DPA) to Yeager Airport (CRW)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI98FA031
- 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-34-200T
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-34
- 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
- N79TH
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dupage Airport (DPA), West Chicago, ILTo Yeager Airport (CRW), Charleston, WV
- 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
- 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
- Flight control, stabilator › Overload
- Flight control, stabilator › Separation
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Vertical stabilizer › Overload
- Vertical stabilizer › Separation
- Wing › Overload
- Wing › Separation
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot received a weather briefing during which time he was informed of an AIRMET for icing conditions. The airplane departed at 1534. Last ATC contact with the airplane was at 1639 when the pilot acknowledged a frequency change while at an altitude of 11,000'msl. The airplane dropped off radar about one minute later. A center weather advisory was in effect which advised of moderate isolated severe mixed/rime icing in clouds between 4,000' and 13,000'. Inspection of the wreckage indicates the airplane experienced an inflight breakup. No evidence was found to indicate any pre-accident failures/malfunctions of the airplane and/or engines existed.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane which resulted in the inflight separation of the wings, vertical stabilizer/rudder, and the stabilator. Factors associated with the accident the pilot continued the flight into known adverse weather and the icing conditions which existed.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI98FA031
- Event ID
- 20001208X09139
- Case number
- CHI98FA031
- 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: 8fc9c4796296c65352ec0a0bc15ff400a3ae5dce7a558e426b995c48445538c9; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:46:02.563Z.