CHI00FA027 · Beech 200
Beech 200 · Accident: on ground/water collision with terrain/water during takeoff
From Chunga Airstrip (CGX) to South Bend International Airport (SBN)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI00FA027
- 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
Beech 200
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 200
- 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
- N869
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chunga Airstrip (CGX)To South Bend International Airport (SBN), South Bend, IN
- 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
- 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
- On ground/water 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Shortly after being cleared for takeoff on runway 18 (3,899 feet by 150 feet, dry concrete) at Merrill C. Meigs Field, Chicago, Illinois, the airplane impacted into Lake Michigan, approximately 300 feet south of the end of the runway. The tower controller said that at the 3/4 field point, the airplane had not rotated. 'All I can see are lights [from the airplane]. At the point where he would have been at the end of the runway, [I] lost the lights.' A witness on the airport said that when the airplane went by, it 'didn't sound like most King Airs do at that point.' There was a pulsating sound, but it was not heavy. The witness said that the airplane was 'bouncing up and down on the [gear] struts, and wasn't coming off the ground.' NTSB Materials examination of the pilot's control yoke showed that there were small distortions in the holes of the column and the rod where the control lock would be inserted. A small crack was observed around 1/4 of the control lock rod hole. The control lock was a substitute for the original airplane equipment. The examination of the control lock showed 'several shiny scratches ... parallel to the length of the pin.' A small deformation was observed near the top of the pin part of the control lock. The company flight department's third pilot said that when they flew the airplane, they always placed the control lock in the pilot's side cockpit wall pocket, along with a car key and a remote hanger door opener. The car key and the door opener were found in the wall pocket during the on-scene investigation. The control lock was recovered from the lake, 7 days later.
Probable cause
On ground collision with the lake for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI00FA027
- Event ID
- 20001212X20071
- Case number
- CHI00FA027
- 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 1999-11-12.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 3adf4fd5c55a77fe4b657dc6748280fa2e83d7e75d20e7a46a28361a3e1647aa; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:38:40.323Z.