CHI98FA080 · Cessna P210N
Cessna P210N · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Decatur Airport (DEC) to Wichita Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport (ICT)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI98FA080
- 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
Cessna P210N
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 210
- 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
- N6669P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Decatur Airport (DEC)To Wichita Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport (ICT), Wichita, KS
- 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 · climb to 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
- 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
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot called the Flight Service Station, obtained a weather briefing and filed an IFR flight plan. He was cleared for takeoff and was instructed to make a left turn after takeoff. Radar contact was established and the pilot was instructed to climb and maintain 6,000 feet and to proceed on course. The pilot acknowledged this transmission. Three minutes later the Champaign Approach Controller asked the pilot to verify that Wichita was his destination. The pilot made a transmission of which only the last portion 'six nine papa' was legible. The approach controller noted that the airplane was turning right and not left as instructed. The controller attempted to contact the pilot regarding the turn, but the transmission was not acknowledged and radar contact was lost. One witness reported seeing the airplane '...come out of the clouds heading straight down to a nose dive.' Another witness reported hearing the engine 'wide open'. The airplane impacted the terrain approximately 1 1/4 mile northeast of the airport. Examination of the airplane and engine did not reveal any anomalies that would have precluded operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane. Contributing factors were low ceiling and freezing drizzle.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI98FA080
- Event ID
- 20001211X09402
- Case number
- CHI98FA080
- 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: 10d7b916bdaf3110bcb6289670fd639e9cc3462bf446eade371777185c44c3f0; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:42:35.208Z.