CHI89LA045 · Piper PA-28-180
Piper PA-28-180 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather on approach
From Porter County Municipal Airport (VPZ) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI89LA045
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-28-180
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N3331R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Porter County Municipal Airport (VPZ)To 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 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
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
- Wing › Ice
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
NO PREFLIGHT WX BRIEFING WAS OBTAINED BEFORE THE FLT. DURING CLIMB-OUT, THE PLT HEARD ABOUT ICING CONDITIONS AT A NEARBY AIRPORT & ELECTED TO RETURN & LAND. BEFORE LANDING, HE ENCOUNTERED FREEZING RAIN & A RAPID ACCUMULATION OF ICE ON THE ACFT. ICE ON THE WINDSHIELD RESTRICTED THE PLT'S FORWARD VISIBILITY, REQUIRING HIM TO USE THE SIDE WINDOWS. DURING THE FLARE TO LAND, HE RAISED THE NOSE OF THE ACFT TO ARREST A SINK RATE, BUT THE ACFT LANDED HARD, COLLAPSING THE RIGHT MAIN GEAR.
Probable cause
INADEQUATE PREFLIGHT PREPARATION BY THE PILOT, WHICH RESULTED IN INADVERTENT FLIGHT IN ICING CONDITIONS AND RAPID ACCUMULATION OF AIRFRAME ICE, AND THE PILOT'S FAILURE TO MAINTAIN SUFFICIENT AIRSPEED TO FLARE DURING THE LANDING. FACTORS RELATED TO THE ACCIDENT WERE: ADVERSE WEATHER CONDITIONS AND THE PILOT'S LACK OF VISUAL PERCEPTION WITH ICE ON THE WINDSHIELD.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI89LA045
- Event ID
- 20001213X27557
- Case number
- CHI89LA045
- 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: 63d1651bc57ea85c0f85b8d901c54f9410fd52984c7f879655500e71d9a44f0e; retrieved 2026-09-23T07:59:13.360Z.