CHI82FA160 · Cessna 172C
Cessna 172C · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Lakeland Airport Noble F Lee Memorial Field (ARV) to Benson Municipal Airport (BBB)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI82FA160
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna 172C
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- 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
- N8432X
- Operator
- Donald Maki
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lakeland Airport Noble F Lee Memorial Field (ARV), Woodruff, WITo Benson Municipal Airport (BBB), Benson, MN
- 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
- Visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC)
- 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 handling, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Spatial disorientation
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Sunburg, MN, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
THE PILOT RECEIVED SEVERAL WEATHER BRIEFINGS AND WAS ADVISED OF A SEVERE COLD FRONT AND THUNDERSTORMS IN AN AREA ON HIS ROUTE. PRIOR TO TAKEOFF, HE WAS ADVISED THAT VFR FLIGHT WAS NOT RECOMMENDED. WHILE EN ROUTE, THE PILOT REPORTED THAT HE WAS "TOTALLY OBSCURED." SHORTLY AFTER THAT, HE REPORTED HAVING DIFFICULTY IN MAINTAINING A HEADING AND THAT HIS GYRO AND MAGNETIC COMPASSES WERE SPINNING. RADIO AND RADAR CONTACT WERE LOST SOON AFTER THAT. SUBSEQUENTLY, THE PLANE CRASHED IN A WOODED AREA. AN EXAMINATION OF THE VACUUM PUMP REVEALED NO PREIMPACT FAILURE. A DISASSEMBLY OF THE DIRECTIONAL GYRO REVEALED SIGNS OF WEAR IN THE UPPER AND LOWER GIMBLE RING BEARINGS WHICH COULD HAVE RESULTED IN ERRATIC OPERATION OR EXCESSIVE PRECESSION.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI82FA160
- Event ID
- 20020917X03060
- Case number
- CHI82FA160
- 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 1982-05-11.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 78627bd97e6fdb42d8a3593606e87217f435bfbdd9f3cceacc6b573dc75329c4; retrieved 2026-09-21T08:23:19.119Z.