CHI90FA096 · Piper PA-60-601P
Piper PA-60-601P · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From St Louis Downtown Airport (CPS) to 12C · Rochelle, IL
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI90FA096
- 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
Piper PA-60-601P
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-60
- 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
- N410HC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From St Louis Downtown Airport (CPS), Cahokia, ILTo 12C · Rochelle, 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 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
BEFORE TAKEOFF, THE PLT RCVD A WX BRIEFING & WAS ADZD OF TSTMS & HVY RAIN ALONG THE ROUTE. THE BRIEFING INCLUDED A WARNING OF A SEVERE TSTM WATCH WITH HAIL, WIND GUSTS TO 65 KTS & A SIGMET (31C). THE PLT FILED AN IFR FLT PLAN & TOOK OFF AT 1148 CST. WHILE EN ROUTE AT 15,000 MSL, HE REQD & RCVD CLNC TO DIVERT 10 DEG LEFT TO AVOID 'SOME CLOUDS.' SOON THEREAFTER, THE ATC CTLR NOTICED THE ACFT WAS ABOUT 500' HI & REMINDED THE PLT TO MAINT 15,000'. THE PLT ACKNOWLEDGED, THEN THERE WAS NO FURTHER COMMUNICATION WITH THE ACFT. SUBSEQUENTLY, AN IN-FLT BREAKUP OF THE ACFT OCCURRED & THE PLANE CRASHED. THE LEFT OUTBOARD WING PANEL SEPD FM POSITIVE OVERLOAD FAILURE & WAS FOUND ABOUT 1 MI FM THE MAIN WRECKAGE. NO PREIMPACT FATIGUE WAS FND. A WITNESS, WHO SAW THE ACFT DSCNDG OUT OF THE CLOUDS, SAW A FUNNEL CLOUD IN THE AREA BEFORE THE ACDNT.
Probable cause
THE PILOT ALLOWED THE AIRCRAFT TO EXCEED ITS DESIGN STRESS LIMITS AFTER ENCOUNTERING ADVERSE WEATHER. FACTORS RELATED TO THE ACCIDENT WERE: THE PILOT'S IMPROPER EVALUATION OF THE WEATHER AND THE ADVERSE WEATHER CONDTIONS.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI90FA096
- Event ID
- 20001212X22680
- Case number
- CHI90FA096
- 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: 62ecdc391cbcd2ff7afd7441a8aea9a13974dcf875e133b9e3cabaa87db8d13c; retrieved 2026-09-21T02:54:24.119Z.