CHI99FA290 · Piper PA-28-181
National Flyers Association Piper PA-28-181 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Fond du Lac County Airport (FLD) to The Ohio State University Airport - Don Scott Field (OSU)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI99FA290
- 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
- 4 · 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-28-181
- 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
- N281PF
- Operator
- National Flyers Association
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fond du Lac County Airport (FLD), Fond du Lac, WITo The Ohio State University Airport - Don Scott Field (OSU), Columbus, OH
- 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 · climb to 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
- 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 › Design stress limits of aircraft, exceeded
- Pilot in command › Flight into known adverse weather, intentional
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The non-instrument rated pilot contacted the Green Bay AFSS at 0117 EST on August 13 and again at 0614 for a weather brief. Both weather briefers reported there was an Airmet for IFR conditions and the VFR flight was not recommended. At 0835 the pilot filed a VFR flight plan. The weather briefer reported that VFR flight was not recommended. Witnesses reported hearing an airplane in the clouds with its engine 'screaming,' and the 'throttle full open.' They reported the wing was separated from the airplane when the airplane came out of the clouds. The right wing, stabilator, and rudder were located within 0.5 miles of the main wreckage site. The inspection of the airplane revealed no pre-existent anomalies to the engine or airframe and all spar fracture surfaces were observed to be granular. The pilot had a total of about 248 flight hours; 81 hours in make and model. The pilot had flown 2.5 hours in the last six months. The pilot had logged no actual instrument flight time, and had a total of one hour of simulated instrument flight. The cloud bases were approximately 1,300 feet agl. A PIPEP reported that cloud tops near Kalamazoo (AZO), located 16 nm to the east, were at 7,000 feet msl about 12 minutes prior to the accident. NTAP data indicated the airplane's altitude was approximately 4,800 feet msl before it was lost to radar.
Probable cause
the pilot flew into known adverse weather, the pilot's lack of total instrument flight experience, and the pilot exceeded the design limits of the airplane. Factors included the pilot's total lack of experience in the type of operation and the pilot's overconfidence in his personal abilities.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI99FA290
- Event ID
- 20001212X19427
- Case number
- CHI99FA290
- 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: e722aa738fcbbb4c1fc77efc8eb8424acca0877fc3180538a309a5d42d9778b6; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:53:11.600Z.