BFO93FA189 · Piper PA-24-250
Aire Austin Piper PA-24-250 · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Fostoria Metropolitan Airport (FZI) to Capital City Airport (CXY)
Event
- NTSB case
- BFO93FA189
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-24-250
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-24
- 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
- N6489P
- Operator
- Aire Austin
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fostoria Metropolitan Airport (FZI), Fostoria, OHTo Capital City Airport (CXY), Harrisburg, PA
- 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
- 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
- Design stress limits of aircraft › Exceeded
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Incapacitation(anoxia/hypoxia)
- Pilot in command › Proper altitude, exceeded
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
DURING A VFR CROSS-COUNTRY, AN IN-FLIGHT BREAKUP OF THE AIRPLANE OCCURRED. WRECKAGE WAS SCATTERED OVER ABOUT A 1.5 MILE AREA. THERE WAS EVIDENCE THE RIGHT WING FAILED IN POSITIVE OVERLOAD ABOUT 9' INBOARD FROM THE WING TIP & STRUCK THE RIGHT HORIZONTAL STABILIZER, WHICH SEPARATED. NO PRE-EXISTING DEFECT WAS NOTED. THE PILOT WAS IN CONTACT WITH CLEVELAND AIR ROUTE TRAFFIC CONTROL CENTER WHEN HE REPORTED AN ALTITUDE OF 16,500' MSL & 'IN THE SOUP.' RADAR DATA FROM CENTER SHOWED THE AIRPLANE MADE SEVERAL ALTITUDE & HEADING EXCURSIONS DURING A 30 MINUTE PERIOD BEFORE THE ACCIDENT. JUST BEFORE DISAPPEARING FROM RADAR, THE FLIGHT TRACK DEVIATED TO THE RIGHT. A WITNESS SAW THE PLANE DESCENDING MINUS A LARGE SECTION OF ONE WING AFTER HEARING A LOUD 'POP.' ACCORDING TO FEDERAL AVIATION REGULATIONS, NO PERSON MAY OPERATE A CIVIL AIRCRAFT AT CABIN PRESSURE ALTITUDES ABOVE 14,000' MSL UNLESS THE REQUIRED MINIMUM FLIGHT CREW IS PROVIDED WITH & USES SUPPLEMENTAL OXYGEN. AN EXAM OF THE WRECKAGE INDICATED THERE WAS NO SUPPLEMENTAL OXYGEN ABOARD THE PLANE.
Probable cause
CONTINUED FLIGHT BY THE PILOT TO AN ALTITUDE THAT WAS NOT APPROPRIATE WITHOUT SUPPLEMENTAL OXYGEN, WHICH RESULTED IN A LOSS OF AIRCRAFT CONTROL DUE TO HYPOXIA AND SUBSEQUENTLY EXCEEDING THE DESIGN STRESS LIMITS OF THE AIRCRAFT. FACTORS RELATED TO THE ACCIDENT WERE: THE ADVERSE WEATHER CONDITIONS, AND CONTINUED FLIGHT BY THE PILOT INTO KNOWN ADVERSE WEATHER CONDITIONS.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record BFO93FA189
- Event ID
- 20001211X13323
- Case number
- BFO93FA189
- 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: a3d9974566c7bc4390213841167390d194f2872496b8b4b7dfb53bbe4d9dcebc; retrieved 2026-09-21T00:22:18.389Z.