CHI98FA309 · Piper PA-28R-200
Piper PA-28R-200 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Airlake Airport (LVN) to Southern Wisconsin Regional Airport (JVL)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI98FA309
- 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
- 3 · 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-28R-200
- 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
- N9350N
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Airlake Airport (LVN), Minneapolis, MNTo Southern Wisconsin Regional Airport (JVL), Janesville, 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 encounter with weather
- 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
- Visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC)
- 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
- Aircraft performance › Exceeded
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Design stress limits of aircraft, exceeded
- Pilot in command › Flight into adverse weather, encountered
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, encountered
- Wing › Overload
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight departed Airlake Airport, Minneapolis, Minnesota en route to Rock County Airport, Janesville, Wisconsin. According to Radar Data, the images showed activity in the area of the accident site. Instrument meteorological conditions prevailed at the time of the accident. The pilot did not possess an airplane instrument rating. At 1928 central daylight time, a person, who stated that his aircraft was N9350N received a visual flight rule weather briefing The briefer reported that a Northeast Southwest orientated cold front was moving through the area, ahead of which was a huge area of thunderstorms and rain showers which started around Rochester and extended to the Steven's Point area. The caller reported, during his weather briefing, that he was looking at the radar of convective activity on a screen in front of him. There were no radio communications with the accident aircraft and Flight Watch or Minneapolis Center. The wreckage was found over a 1,350 foot by 1,030 foot area. Both wings, vertical stabilizer and left half of the stabilator were not located with the aircraft's fuselage and exhibited deformation at their separation points.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight/planning inspection and his continued flight into known adverse weather conditions that led to spatial disorientation and loss of aircraft control. Also causal was the pilot exceeded the design limits of the airplane causing in-flight separation of the wings and empennage. Contributing to the accident were the poor weather conditions, and the pilot's lack of an instrument rating.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI98FA309
- Event ID
- 20001211X10784
- Case number
- CHI98FA309
- 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 1998-08-10.
- API snapshot SHA-256: bdc7257304b411231977146afc152e681df9fa852bc73b7dd936e0da43d1c1e3; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:28:10.125Z.