Four Lakes Aviation Piper PA-23 accident
Piper PA-23 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather on approach
From Waterloo, IA to Sioux Falls, SD
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN82FA034
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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
Piper PA-23
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-23
- 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
- N5799Y
- Operator
- Four Lakes Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Waterloo, IATo Sioux Falls, SD
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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 · VFR pattern final
- 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
- 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 › In-flight planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
AS THE PILOT APPROACHED SIOUX FALLS HE RECEIVED INFORMATION THAT IT WAS BELOW MINIMUMS, SO HE STARTED TO DIVERT. AS HE PASSED OVER SIOUX FALLS HE COULD SEE MITCHELL, SD, WHICH APPEARED TO BE CLEAR, THEREFORE, HE ELECTED TO LAND THERE. IT CONTINUED TO LOOK CLEAR UNTIL HE WAS ON A SHORT FINAL APPROACH FOR LANDING. WITH THE LANDING LIGHT ON, HIS VISUAL REFERENCES WERE LOST. AFTER TURNING THE LANDING LIGHT OFF, HE COULD AGAIN SEE THE RUNWAY LIGHTS (AT ABOUT 20 FT AGL). AS HE DESCENDED FURTHER THE LIGHTS BECAME BARELY VISIBLE AND HE FLARED AT AN ANGLE TO THE RUNWAY. BY THIS TIME HE REALIZED HE WAS HEADED FOR THE EDGE OF THE RUNWAY BUT IT WAS TOO LATE TO CORRECT OR GO AROUND. THE PLANE TOUCHED DOWN ABOUT 1/2 ON AND 1/2 OFF THE RUNWAY. AFTER TRAVELING ABOUT 20 FT IN SNOW ABOUT 6 INCHES DEEP, THE NOSE GEAR FAILED.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN82FA034
- Event ID
- 20020917X01968
- Case number
- DEN82FA034
- 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 1982-02-18.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 197a5a521f608dca433a7cb4bd2c345557c54e19c30103198d39a213c93e04cf; retrieved 2026-09-18T21:12:09.480Z.