CHI98FA086 · Piper PA-28-160
Piper PA-28-160 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Brainerd Lakes Regional Airport (BRD) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI98FA086
- 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-28-160
- 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
- N5099W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Brainerd Lakes Regional Airport (BRD), Brainerd, MNTo not recorded
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, lubrication, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Incapacitation(carbon monoxide)
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot departed on a night cross country flight at 2230 cst. The airplane did not arrive at its planned destination at 2330 cst according to the wife of the passenger. The wreckage was found about 4-miles northeast of an airport that had been reporting IFR conditions during the time period the airplane was en route and after its planned arrival. Examination of the airframe and engine revealed no mechanical anomalies that would prevent flight. The pilot's toxicology report showed about 26-percent carbon monoxide in his blood. The ends of the airplane's muffler were corroded and had many pinhole-sized holes along its edges. Its shroud had baked oil on its inside surface. The muffler had rust on both sides of its body. The airplane had flown about 4-hours during the year before the latest annual inspection had been conducted. The mechanic who had inspected the muffler said he had noticed some small pinhole-sized holes at the muffler's end. He said he did not think they were serious or would cause a problem. This inspection was conducted about 2- months before the accident.
Probable cause
was the pilot's patial incapacitation due to carbon monoxide poisoning. A factor associated with this accident was the mechanic's inadequate inspection of the airplane's muffler and inadequate preflight planning and preparation by the pilot.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI98FA086
- Event ID
- 20001211X09404
- Case number
- CHI98FA086
- 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: 826228eb719f99c661dd342d774ecf8c6681ac9c0d65d86a5874533178e619eb; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:41:36.871Z.