NYC89LA034 · Cessna 340
Cessna 340 · Accident: in flight collision with object on approach
From Ann Arbor Municipal Airport (ARB) to Waterbury Oxford Airport (OXC)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC89LA034
- 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
- 0 · 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 340
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 340
- 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
- N468CM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ann Arbor Municipal Airport (ARB), Ann Arbor, MITo Waterbury Oxford Airport (OXC)
- 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
- 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 object
- 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 › Decision height, not used
- Pilot in command › IFR procedure, not followed
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Oxford, CT, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
ACCORDING TO WITNESSES, THE WX WAS CHANGING FROM MINUTE TO MINUTE AS THE ACFT WAS ARRIVING. WITNESSES RPRTD THE WIND WAS BLOWING FROM EAST TO NORTHEAST AT 10 TO 15 KTS, RAIN FALL WAS VARYING FROM STRONG TO PERIODS OF LIGHT RAIN, AND THE CEILING (CLOUD LEVEL) WAS VARIABLE. THE PLT BEGAN AN ILS RWY 36 APCH; HOWEVER, BEFORE REACHING THE ARPT, THE ACFT COLLIDED WITH TREES & CRASHED ABOUT 2 MI SHORT OF THE RWY. THE PLT WAS SERIOUSLY INJURED & COULD NOT REMEMBER THE ACDNT, BUT DID RECALLED RECEIVING A WIND SHEAR ALERT. THE PLT RPRTD AN INTERMITTENT PROBLEM WITH THE AUTOPILOT HEADING MODE; HOWEVER, NO OTHER PREIMPACT MALFUNCTION OR FAILURE OF THE ACFT WAS EVIDENT.
Probable cause
COLLISION WITH TREES AND TERRAIN DUE TO THE PILOT EXCEEDING APPROACH MINIMUM ALTITUDE DURING AN ILS APPROACH.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC89LA034
- Event ID
- 20001213X27345
- Case number
- NYC89LA034
- 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: 612b5f8a061d0e4631963db31355f766c2a9cbc9770ac0943e74620daa3d3b02; retrieved 2026-09-21T16:00:15.434Z.