CHI02FA074 · Cessna 441
Cessna 441 · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Springdale Municipal Airport (ASG) to Garfield County Regional Airport (RIL)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI02FA074
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
Cessna 441
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 441
- 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
- N441AR
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Springdale Municipal Airport (ASG), Springdale, ARTo Garfield County Regional Airport (RIL), Rifle, CO
- 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
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Spatial disorientation
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Impact forces and fire destroyed the airplane when it impacted the terrain after a loss of control during cruise flight. The pilot received a weather brief by AFSS prior to departure concerning the IFR conditions along the route of flight, which included, rain, freezing rain, icing, turbulence, and snow. The cloud tops were forecast to be 25,000 feet. The pilot filed a flight plan with a cruise flight level of 28,000 feet. About 32 minutes after takeoff, at 1345:58, the pilot reported he had an attitude gyro problem and that he was hand flying the airplane. The airplane's altitude remained at about 28,000 feet for the next seven minutes. At 1352:46, the pilot stated he had an emergency, but at 1352:53, the pilot stated, "Uh it came back on never mind." At 1353:26, the pilot stated, "I need to get to uh anywhere I can get a visual." At 1353:56, the airplane was cleared to climb to 31,000 feet, and radar data indicated the airplane was currently at 27,000 feet. The radar data indicated the airplane went into a series of steep descents and climbs over the next 4.5 minutes until radar contact was lost at 2,500 feet. The pilot of a commercial airline who was flying in the same sector as the accident airplane reported that he heard the accident pilot state that he was in a spin. The commercial airline pilot stated they were flying at 33,000 feet and were "barely above the tops" of the clouds. The airplane impacted the terrain in a steep nose down attitude and burst into flames. The engines, flight controls, and flight instruments did not exhibit any pre-existing anomalies. A witness reported that two days prior to the accident, the pilot had advised him that the airplane's attitude gyro was having problems. There was no record that the pilot had the attitude gyro inspected prior to the accident. A witness reported the pilot routinely flew with the autopilot engaged soon after takeoff. He reported that he had never observed the pilot hand-fly the airplane in instrument conditions.
Probable cause
The pilot's spatial disorientation resulting in a loss of control and collision with the ground. Additional factors included the pilot operating the airplane with known deficiencies and the instrument flight conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI02FA074
- Event ID
- 20020207X00196
- Case number
- CHI02FA074
- 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, coordinates. 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: dcb9bbebe5987620fa6b7bbd769bc74f8cc03d58fcf1d78a630d6e0937281ce1; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:13:33.970Z.