CHI00FA039 · Cessna 310N
Cessna 310N · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Vermilion Regional Airport (DNV) to UNKNOWN
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI00FA039
- 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
- 2 · 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 310N
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 310
- 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
- N5038Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Vermilion Regional Airport (DNV)To UNKNOWN
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC)
- 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(cfi) › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Supervision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The instructional flight crashed 1-sm mile south of the airport during initial climb. A witness reported that while the airplane was taking off he heard a, '...whoosh sound and thought an engine failure had occurred...' The witness stated that the aircraft, from an altitude of 100-200 feet above ground level (agl), started a high rate descent towards the runway, then recovered into level flight for a few seconds, then began a climb that took the aircraft into the clouds. Weather conditions at the time of the accident were reported to be instrument meteorological conditions with 2-sm visibility, partial obscuration due to light precipitation, and an overcast ceiling of 1,300-feet. The accident occurred during a dark night. The governing FAA air traffic control center, Champaign approach, reported no communications were received from or transmitted to the accident airplane and additionally no flight plan information was filed or requested. No anomalies were found with the airframe, or its related systems, that could be associated with a preexisting condition. No anomalies were found with either engine, or their related systems, that could be associated with a preexisting condition.
Probable cause
Aircraft control not being maintained by the flight instructor and the flight instructor's inadequate supervision of the flight. Factors to the accident were the flight instructor's VFR flight into IMC weather conditions, the inadequate preflight planning/preparation conducted by the flight instructor, the dark night, the low ceiling, and the rain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI00FA039
- Event ID
- 20001212X20196
- Case number
- CHI00FA039
- 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 1999-12-10.
- API snapshot SHA-256: b78e87563929e5d6a11a651cc9ba584506ec54ad9ce65d996f6bfa6bca0c781a; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:35:42.876Z.