CHI94MA032 · Cessna 421B
Omni Group Cessna 421B · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Oakland County International Airport (PTK) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI94MA032
- 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
- 5 · 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
Cessna 421B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 421
- 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
- N41010
- Operator
- Omni Group
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Oakland County International Airport (PTK), Pontiac, MITo 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
- Approach · IFR missed approach
- 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
- 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
- Stall
- 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 › Stall, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported ice accretion en route to his destination and subsequently requested, and received a lower altitude from ATC. The flight was issued a clearance for a VOR-A approach to the Greensburg Airport, and was observed by a witness north of the airport to fly for a short period down runway 18 about seven feet above the runway. The witness then observed the airplane began to climb and fly off in a southerly direction. Other witnesses saw the airplane flying in the vicinity of the airport beneath an overcast ceiling estimated between 300' and 1000' AGL. One witness, located about two miles south of the airport, saw the airplane turn sharply left, drop nose low, recover, drop nose low, and then descend from sight behind trees. Investigators and rescue personnel discovered a large amount of ice debris along the flight path and outside the fire ring at the crash site.
Probable cause
an inadvertent stall by the pilot in command. Factors associated with the accident are the icing conditions and low ceilings.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI94MA032
- Event ID
- 20001211X13724
- Case number
- CHI94MA032
- 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: c8e9d89c291aa36ebeb8f4e9653b71e0f62fc1acf4743e7aa2b57df1ea088712; retrieved 2026-09-21T00:19:49.417Z.