CHI98FA287 · Navion A
Navion A · Accident: in flight collision with object en route
From Greater Kankakee Airport (IKK) to Wittman Regional Airport (OSH)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI98FA287
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Navion A
- Aircraft type
- Navion A
- 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
- N8991H
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Greater Kankakee Airport (IKK), Kankakee, ILTo Wittman Regional Airport (OSH), Oshkosh, WI
- 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 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
- Wire, transmission
- 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 › Proper altitude, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Visual lookout, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot took off from Kankakee, Illinois, en route to Oshkosh, Wisconsin. A witness at, Plainfield, Wisconsin, observed the airplane flying southbound at 200 to 300 feet above the ground. The airplane appeared to be following Interstate 39. When the witness first saw the airplane approaching from the North, he noticed that the landing gear was down. As the airplane continued south, the witness observed the landing gear go up, and then extend again. The witness noticed no unusual sounds with the airplane's engine. Several witnesses traveling in automobiles northbound on Interstate 39, observed the airplane flying southward, following the Interstate, at an altitude of 100 to 175 feet above ground level. One witness said that the airplane looked as if it was landing. Another witness said that he saw the airplane 'hit the power lines, and visual arcing of the power lines, as the plane tumbled to the ground.' Examination of the wreckage revealed no anomalies.
Probable cause
Failure of the pilot to maintain proper altitude, and his failure to maintain adequate visual lookout to see and avoid obstructions. The transmission wire was a contributing factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI98FA287
- Event ID
- 20001211X10482
- Case number
- CHI98FA287
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1998-08-01.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 51dd197970548fad1205ca38a966a286e89020a5c4abe702aa123c59a3b52022; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:29:02.788Z.