CHI87FA054 · Bellanca 14-19-3A
Bellanca 14-19-3A · Accident: in flight encounter with weather on approach
From Central Illinois Regional Airport at Bloomington-Normal (BMI) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI87FA054
- 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
- 4 · 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
Bellanca 14-19-3A
- Aircraft type
- Bellanca 14
- 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
- N1253R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Central Illinois Regional Airport at Bloomington-Normal (BMI), BLOOMINTON, ILTo 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
- 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/mush
- 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, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Stall/mush, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
AT 0850 CST, THE PLT GOT A WX BRIEFING FOR A FLT TO THE DUPAGE ARPT. AT THAT TIME, THE CURRENT DUPAGE WX WAS IN PART: PARTIAL OBSCN, 2 MI VIS WITH FOG; ALSO, THE PLT WAS GIVEN SVRL PIREPS FOR LGT TO MOD ICING IN SOUTHERN WISCONSIN. AT 1231, HE GOT A WX UPDATE. AT THAT TIME, THE DUPAGE WX WAS IN PART: 600' OVC, 2 MI VIS WITH FOG; THE FORECAST WAS FOR THESAME WX TO CONT WITH OCNL 1000' OVC, 4 MI VIS WITH FOG, BUT NO ICING WAS EXPECTED. AFTER ARRIVING, THE PLT MADE A VOR RWY 10 APCH, THEN CIRCLED TO LND ON RWY 28. THE TWR CTLRS RPRTD THE PLT MADE THE CIRCLING MANEUVER AT 50' TO 100' AGL, ALTHO THERE WAS A RPRTD 500' CEILING & 1-1/4 MI VIS WITH FOG. MINIMUMS FOR THE APCH WERE 500' CEILING & 1 MI VIS. DRG THE BASE TO FINAL TURN, THE ACFT IMPACTED THE GND & BURNED. AFTER THE FIRE WAS EXTINGUISHED, LEADING EDGE ICE WAS FND UNDER THE UNBURNED HORIZONTAL STABILIZER & ALONG THE WRECKAGE PATH. AT THE TIME OF THE PLT'S LAST MED CERT ON 4/6/84, HERPRTD A TOTAL FLT TIME OF 2200 HRS. THE RGT FRONT SEAT PAX WAS A RATED PLT; HIS MED CERT WAS DATED 4/15/82.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI87FA054
- Event ID
- 20001213X35319
- Case number
- CHI87FA054
- 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: 5751c0ab15b0aeae6e06f572432c394f2c1845c67044cb92a823e9e0e38fa1f5; retrieved 2026-09-21T04:17:11.502Z.