CHI98LA029 · Piper PA-24-250
Piper PA-24-250 · Accident: in flight collision with object while maneuvering
From Roanoke–Blacksburg Regional Airport (ROA) to Hannibal Regional Airport (HAE)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI98LA029
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-24-250
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-24
- 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
- N7890P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Roanoke–Blacksburg Regional Airport (ROA), Roanoke, VATo Hannibal Regional Airport (HAE), Hannibal, MO
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Tree(s)
- 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 › Flight into adverse weather, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A witness observed the airplane in flight just before the accident occurred. He said that he saw the airplane fly south to north at a very low altitude before it disappeared. A minute later, the witness saw the airplane heading westbound. He watched the airplane until it disappeared behind some trees. The witness said that the weather was very rainy and windy, with very bad visibility. There were no witnesses to the airplane accident. The pilot was not instrument rated, and had logged no flight time in actual instrument weather conditions. The weather observation reported by the Flight Service Station at Terre Haute, Indiana (38 miles north-northeast of the accident site), on 11/2/97, at 1745 est (1645 cst), was few clouds at 2,400 feet above ground level (agl), a broken ceiling at 3,300 feet agl, an overcast ceiling at 5,000 feet agl, and rain showers.
Probable cause
the pilot's improper decision to continue flight into adverse weather conditions The low ceiling and the heavy rain were factors.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI98LA029
- Event ID
- 20001208X09142
- Case number
- CHI98LA029
- 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: de877b0230fad33e1a4580af273426528ee5705edda879ea2baf4a1bba8e5d0c; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:46:06.254Z.