Airborne Express Cessna 402B accident
Cessna 402B · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water on approach
From Central Wisconsin Airport (CWA) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI90FA065
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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 402B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 402
- 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
- N87163
- Operator
- Airborne Express
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Central Wisconsin Airport (CWA), Mosinee, WITo 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- Approach · IFR final approach
- 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 › Flight into known adverse weather, continued
- Weather condition › Windshear
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PILOT RECEIVED NUMEROUS WEATHER BRIEFINGS/UPDATES BEFORE TAKEOFF, WHICH INCLUDED TWO PILOT REPORTS OF WINDSHEAR BY AIRCRAFT ON THE APPROACH INTO APPLETON. SHORTLY AFTER TAKEOFF CONVECTIVE SIGMET 1E WAS TRANSMITTED BY THE RADAR CONTROLLER ON THE SAME FREQUENCY HE WAS WORKING N87163. THIS SIGMET CALLED FOR EMBEDDED THUNDERSTORMS. ABOUT 10 MIN LATER, WHILE BEING VECTORED FOR THE APPROACH INTO APPLETON, THE PILOT WAS GIVEN HEADING DEVIATIONS BECAUSE OF WEATHER. THE AIRCRAFT CRASHED 1/2 MI FROM THE APPROACH END OF THE RUNWAY. A WITNESS WHOSE RESIDENCE IS LOCATED BETWEEN THE OM AND MM FOR THE ILS APPROACH REPORTED A 'HUGE DOWNPOUR' WITH 'VERY STRONG WINDS' AT THE TIME OF THE ACCIDENT. WRECKAGE EXAMINATION REVEALED THAT ALL POWER CONTROLS FOR BOTH ENGINES WERE IN THE FULL FORWARD POSITION, AND THAT THE LEFT AND RIGHT MAIN LANDING GEAR MOUNTING TRUNNIONS WERE DISPLACED UPWARD INTO THE WING FUEL TANKS.
Probable cause
THE PILOT'S DECISION TO CONTINUE FLIGHT INTO KNOWN ADVERSE WEATHER CONDITIONS RESULTING IN A WINDSHEAR ENCOUNTER WITH INSUFFICIENT ALTITUDE FOR RECOVERY. THE EXISTING ADVERSE WEATHER CONDITIONS WERE FACTORS.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI90FA065
- Event ID
- 20001212X22384
- Case number
- CHI90FA065
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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 1990-01-17.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 8c052ce59ffc18082372899a9651a3884158293049b4762c40606bdb62e33bdf; retrieved 2026-09-18T14:07:15.909Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N87163; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.