CHI98LA222 · Grumman-Schweizer 164B
Grumman-Schweizer 164B · Accident: on ground/water collision with terrain/water during takeoff
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI98LA222
- 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
- 0 · 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
Grumman-Schweizer 164B
- Aircraft type
- Grumman Schweizer 164
- 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
- N48532
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo 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 137: Agricultural
- 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
- Takeoff · rejected takeoff
- 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
- On ground/water collision with terrain/water
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Abort, delayed
- Pilot in command › Aircraft weight and balance, exceeded
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was on takeoff roll approximately three-quarters of the way down the runway, and just at flying airspeed when it 'hit a soft spot that slowed the airplane.' The pilot attempted to dump his load of chemical, but the dump valve would not open. At the departure end of the runway, the pilot tried to lift the airplane into the air so as to clear a road. The airplane's main landing gear struck the road shoulder causing the airplane to skip over the road. The airplane impacted into the field and flipped over onto its top, approximately 50 feet south of the road. Examination of the wreckage determined that the airplane's gross weight at the time of the accident was approximately 6,654 pounds. Weight and Balance Data taken from the G-164B Pilot's Operating Handbook indicates that the maximum gross weight for the G-164B with the R-1340 engine is 5,200 pounds. Civil Aeronautics Manual (CAM) 8, paragraph 8.10-4 (b) 'Maximum Weight' states that establishing a maximum weight for an agricultural aircraft is not required.
Probable cause
the delayed abort by the pilot, the overweight condition of the airplane, and the pilot's inadequate preparation prior to takeoff. Factors contributing to this accident were the wet condition of the airstrip, the hopper dump valve not working, and the road shoulder.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI98LA222
- Event ID
- 20001211X10268
- Case number
- CHI98LA222
- 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: a61f950286f2faf3a72d7f3960e4f2d8f26bd821469670e33eb1e2a4d5c0aefc; retrieved 2026-09-22T17:37:05.774Z.