CHI89LA099 · Piper PA-28-180
Piper PA-28-180 · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Waukesha County Airport (UES) to YSS
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI89LA099
- 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
- N4734L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Waukesha County Airport (UES), Waukesha, WITo YSS
- 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PLT RPRTD THAT AS HE WAS LANDING, THE ACFT ENCOUNTERED WIND THAT WAS SWIRLING BELOW TREETOP LEVEL. SUBSEQUENTLY, THE ACFT STRUCK THE GROUND WITH THE LEFT WING TIP & DEPARTED THE LEFT SIDE OF THE RWY. APRX 23 MI NORTHWEST AT RHINELANDER, WI, THE 1450 CDT WIND WAS FROM 230 DEG AT 10 KTS. THE PLT ESTIMATED THE WIND AT CRANDON WAS FROM THE SOUTH AT 20 GUSTING 25 KTS.
Probable cause
IMPROPER INFLIGHT PLANNING/DECISION BY THE PILOT WHICH RESULTED IN LOSS OF CONTROL & SUBSEQUENT WINGTIP COLLISION WITH THE GROUND DURING THE LANDING. THE CROSSWIND AND TURBULENCE WERE CONTRIBUTING FACTORS.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI89LA099
- Event ID
- 20001213X28278
- Case number
- CHI89LA099
- 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: f1cb3c2ba4d6b9679c64470f40a6d4b14d8b63eb50f9b50707aba26c8fbb4f7b; retrieved 2026-09-22T00:12:45.888Z.