CHI91LA047 · Cessna 175
Cessna 175 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Cottonwood Airport (1C8) to 1ND3 · Kindred, ND
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI91LA047
- 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 175
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 175
- 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
- N6626E
- Operator
- Thomas C Tunby · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cottonwood Airport (1C8), Rockford, ILTo 1ND3 · Kindred, ND
- 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
- 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); Tree(s)
- 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 › Clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE NON-INST RATED PLT, WHO WAS AN A&P MECH & AN AUTHORIZED INSPECTOR, HAD JUST PURCHASED AN ACFT. ON 12/18/90, HE & ANOTHER MECH TRAVELED TO ROCKFORD, IL TO TAKE POSSESSION OF THE ACFT. THEY WORKED ON THE ACFT & THE PLT CERTIFIED AN ANNUAL INSPN. ON 12/19/90, THE PLT OBTAINED A WX BRIEFING FOR A FLT TO KINDRED, ND. THE WX PREVENTED FLT TO KINDRED, BUT THE PLT ELECTED TO FLY AS FAR AS WX WOULD PERMIT. HE TOOK OFF AT ABOUT 1415 CST. A RESIDENT NR BOSCOBEL HEARD AN ACFT FLYING LOW IN HIS VCNTY AT ABOUT 1530 TO 1600 CST. LATER, THE RESIDENT LEARNED THAT AN ACFT WAS MISSING. HE SEARCHED THE AREA & FOUND THE WRECKAGE WHERE THE ACFT HAD HIT TREES WHILE DSCNDG ON A SOUTHERLY HEADING. THE RESIDENT RECALLED THAT THE VISIBILITY WAS ABOUT 200 YDS WHEN HE HEARD THE ACFT BEFORE IT CRASHED. ABOUT 25 MI EAST AT LONE ROCK, WI, THE 1459 CST WX WAS IN PART: 700' OVC, 1-1/2 MI VIS WITH FOG. NO PREIMPACT PART FAILURE/MALFUNCTION OF THE ACFT WAS FOUND.
Probable cause
THE PILOT'S CONTINUED VFR FLIGHT INTO INSTRUMENT METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS (IMC) AND HIS FAILURE TO REMAIN CLEAR OF THE TREES. FACTORS RELATED TO THE ACCIDENT WERE: THE ADVERSE WEATHER CONDITIONS AND THE PILOT'S LACK OF INSTRUMENT EXPERIENCE.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI91LA047
- Event ID
- 20001212X24744
- Case number
- CHI91LA047
- 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: 3c0b3141fa45c3442d7a6c8a9e6a1f8ee4e9b60cb93d6fd7d5cda94afa14eb53; retrieved 2026-09-21T02:03:00.556Z.