MKC83FA023 · Piper PA-28-140
Piper PA-28-140 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From C · Medicine Lodge, KS to C · Wichita, KS
Event
- NTSB case
- MKC83FA023
- 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
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-28-140
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N500FL
- Operator
- Affluent Flyers
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From C · Medicine Lodge, KSTo C · Wichita, KS
- 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, uncontrolled
- Pilot in command › Lack of total instrument time
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Spatial disorientation
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, continued
- Weather condition › Clouds
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE ACFT CRASHED 12 MI FROM THE DEPARTURE POINT IN HILLY TERRAIN ON A DIRECT ROUTE TO THE DESTINATION IN A 40 DEG NOSE LOW & 75 DEG RIGHT WING LOW ATTITUDE. THERE ARE NO WX REPORTING FACILITIES NEAR THE ACCIDENT SITE. THE 1851 WX OBSERVATION AT ENID,OK (62 MI SE) WAS 1600 FT BROKEN & 5 MI IN FOG. THE 1931 WX OBSERVATION AT WICHITA, KS (52 MI NE) WAS 900 FT BROKEN & 6 MI IN FOG. THE OTHER PILOT HAD A STUDENT CERTIFICATE & WAS PRESIDENT OF THE FLYING CLUB THAT OPERATED THE ACFT. BOTH OCCUPANTS WERE FOUND OUTSIDE OF THE ACFT.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MKC83FA023
- Event ID
- 20020917X04974
- Case number
- MKC83FA023
- 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 1982-11-18.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 359cd0c2a9f9d7c7ab3adddc8b59c11412e65e594244ecd449dd27c800066d31; retrieved 2026-09-21T07:31:22.922Z.