MKC83FA081 · Piper PA-24-400
Piper PA-24-400 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From M43 · Dexter, MO to Houston Memorial Airport (M48)
Event
- NTSB case
- MKC83FA081
- 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
- 1 · 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
- Unknown
Piper PA-24-400
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-24
- 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
- N8611P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From M43 · Dexter, MOTo Houston Memorial Airport (M48), Houston, 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 · 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
- Tree(s)
- 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 › Proper altitude, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE STUDENT PLT DEPARTED DEXTER, MO AT APRX DUSK ON A VFR, NO-FLT-PLAN FLT TO HOUSTON, MO. TIME REQUIRED FOR THE FLT WOULD HAVE BEEN APRX 30 MIN (ESTIMATED). AT 1900 CST, THE BUNKER, MO CITY MARSHAL REPORTED THAT AN ACFT FLEW OVER BUNKER SO LOW THAT HE THOUGHT IT WOULD HIT THE WATER TOWER. APRX 1/2 HR LATER, ANOTHER PERSON REPORTED A LOW FLYING PLANE OVER HIGHWAY 72 NEAR BUNKER. NEAR THE SAME TIME, CAMPERS BETWEEN BUNKER & SALEM, MO SAW A LOW FLYING PLANE CIRCLE AT ABOUT TREE TOP LEVEL, THEN DEPART TO THE NORTHWEST. SHORTLY THEREAFTER, THEY HEARD A POPPING SOUND & THE THE ENG NOISE QUIT ABRUPTLY. THE ACFT WAS FOUND THE NEXT DAY WHERE IT HAD IMPACTED WITH TREES APRX 30 FT AGL, THEN CAME TO REST AT THE BASES OF 2 LARGE TREES. AN INVESTIGATION REVEALED THERE WERE AREAS OF IMC ALONG THE ROUTES & THE PLT HAD BEEN CAUTIONED THAT VFR FLT WAS NOT RECOMMENDED. THE SEARCH FOR THE ACFT HAD BEEN DELAYED DUE TO DARKNESS & THUNDERSTORM ACTIVITY. AN EXAM OF THE WRECKAGE REVEALED NO EVIDENCE OF A PREIMPACT, MECHANICAL FAILURE.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MKC83FA081
- Event ID
- 20001214X42537
- Case number
- MKC83FA081
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1983-03-27.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 590860d3e66c58320773f5e1a90ba560d597923e1be5a4e9643df444cd3abc58; retrieved 2026-09-21T07:00:11.168Z.