MKC86FA189 · Piper PA28-151
Piper PA28-151 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From 3WE · Fenton, MO to Kirksville Regional Airport (IRK)
Event
- NTSB case
- MKC86FA189
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Piper PA28-151
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA28
- 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
- N44501
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 3WE · Fenton, MOTo Kirksville Regional Airport (IRK), Kirksville, MO
- 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 · climb to 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
- Stall/spin
- 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 › Airspeed, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Stall/spin, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
RADAR SIGNAL DATA RECORDED THE SUBJ ACFT MOVING NORTHWEST IN A SHALLOW CLIMB. THE TRACK DATA TERMINATED ABT 0538 C.D.T. OR ABT 12 MINUTES INTO THE FLT. A WITNESS NEAR THE VOR STATION STATED HE HEARD AN ACFT FLYING OVERHEAD, ABT THE TIME THE FAA REPORTED LOSING THE SIGNAL FM THE RADAR SCOPE. THE WITNESS LISTENED INTENTLY FOR THE SOUND OF THE ACFT ENG WITH EXPECTATION OF THE SOUND TO FADE INTO THE DISTANCE, BUT HE DID NOT HEAR ADDITIONAL ENG SOUND. WX COND'S FOR THE AREA CONSISTED OF MARGINAL VFR AND IFR CONDITION WITH THUNDERSTORM ACTIVITY MOVING INTO THE ST. LOUIS AREA. ACCORDING TO AVAILABLE PERSONAL FLT RCRDS, THE PIC WAS NOT PROPERLY QUALIFIED IN INSTRUMENT FLT COND'S AND WAS NOT CURRENT FOR FLT IN INSTRUMENT METEOROLOGICAL COND'S. THE ACFT ACCIDENT EXAM DID NOT REVEAL ANY PRE-IMPACT FLT CONTROL PBLMS.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MKC86FA189
- Event ID
- 20001213X34839
- Case number
- MKC86FA189
- 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: ecb1f54314529abf23ea821c71e858c1b41be3fb8643cc8c577fafcec9a40bf7; retrieved 2026-09-21T04:23:48.519Z.