CHI99LA214 · Weatherly 620B
Weatherly 620B · Accident: in flight collision with object during takeoff
From Timber Lake Municipal Airport (D58) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI99LA214
- 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
Weatherly 620B
- Aircraft type
- Weatherly 620
- 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
- N350WR
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Timber Lake Municipal Airport (D58)To 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
- 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
- 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 › Aborted takeoff, not performed
- Pilot in command › Wrong runway, selected
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The aerial spraying aircraft was loaded with 270 gallons of solution and was attempting to takeoff from the Timber Lake Airport on Runway 17 (2,400 feet by 120 feet, dry/turf). The density altitude at the time was 3,680 feet and a weather reporting station, located 30 miles and 075 degrees magnetic from the accident site, was reporting calm winds. According to the South Dakota Airport Directory, the Timber Lake Airport has a second turf runway (Runway 12/30) that is 3,300 feet long and 150 feet wide. The aircraft lifted off and then settled back onto the runway. The aircraft lifted off again and then struck a fence. The pilot stated that he decided to continue and started to dump the load of chemicals that he was carrying. The aircraft then struck another fence and posts and came to rest in a road east of the airport. The pilot stated that he did not believe that there were any problems with the aircraft. In his statement, the pilot wrote, '... what I wish I would have done is taken off on the other runway or not have filled her quite as full.' A post accident examination revealed no mechanical anomalies.
Probable cause
the pilots selection of the shorter runway and his failure to abort the takeoff. Factors to the accident were the high density altitude, the fence and the fence posts.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI99LA214
- Event ID
- 20001212X19180
- Case number
- CHI99LA214
- 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: 777e39769cb58a241bb9943617336fd6846d72e845f423d8dd9f3ac7c9be7d5c; retrieved 2026-09-22T14:37:29.846Z.