CHI99FA356 · Piper PA-28-140
Piper PA-28-140 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water en route
From Chetek Municipal Southworth Airport (Y23) to Illinois Valley Regional Airport Walter A Duncan Field (VYS)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI99FA356
- 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
- 1 · 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-28-140
- 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
- N5747U
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chetek Municipal Southworth Airport (Y23), Chetek, WITo Illinois Valley Regional Airport Walter A Duncan Field (VYS), Peru, IL
- 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 collision with terrain/water
- 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 › Altitude/clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Flight into adverse weather, continued
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Clinton, IA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The accident airplane was found in the Mississippi River. The pilot was found fatally injured. Automated Flight Service Station briefed N5747U's pilot six times and that pilot was told in each briefing that a visual flight rules flight was not recommended. Two witnesses heard an airplane fly overhead and then heard silence. Both said the weather was dark and raining. A witness said he flew in the local area, he descended into visual conditions at about 450 to 500 ft above ground level, and that conditions were consistent throughout the area. No signs of engine or airframe preimpact anomalies were found. All cylinders exhibited a thumb compression and engine control continuity was found. Both magnetos produced spark at all leads. Fuel was found in the hose leading to the carburetor and fuel exited the hose when the engine was rotated. A fuel like smell was present when the fuel tanks were recovered. Flight control continuity was found to all surfaces except to the left aileron. The left wing, outboard of the spar joint splice was not found.
Probable cause
the pilot's continued flight into known adverse weather conditions and not maintaining altitude/clearance. Factors were the low clouds, rain, and dark night conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI99FA356
- Event ID
- 20001212X19704
- Case number
- CHI99FA356
- 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 1999-09-28.
- API snapshot SHA-256: d1217aa0d5fe24d3417e982477a619fbe3806fb773c99d4be0e7933e8f6840e0; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:45:00.323Z.