CHI03FA246 · Piper PA-28-180
Piper PA-28-180 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Karl Stefan Memorial Airport (OFK) to Montevideo Chippewa County Airport (MVE)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI03FA246
- 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
- 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
Piper PA-28-180
- 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
- N4577T
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Karl Stefan Memorial Airport (OFK), Norfolk, NETo Montevideo Chippewa County Airport (MVE), Montevideo, 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 › Altitude/clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was destroyed on impact with terrain. Visual to instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) prevailed in the area. A visual flight rules (VFR) flight plan was on file. The pilot was fatally injured. The wreckage was found during a search for the airplane because the pilot did not arrive as he had flight planned. A pilot flying in the area stated, "I was IMC until I descended to 1000 ft above the ground." An agricultural spray pilot in the area delayed his takeoff because he thought the weather was too low. A witness stated, "The cloud cover was low 100' to 150'. ... The plane was in [and] out of the clouds, going in a northern direction." An on-scene investigation was performed. No anomalies were found.
Probable cause
The pilot not maintaining altitude/clearance from terrain and his continued VFR flight into IMC during cruise flight. A factor was the low ceilings.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI03FA246
- Event ID
- 20030812X01313
- Case number
- CHI03FA246
- 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: c324eb48d58cf29575a9f2593ada32946e3de489bd0e9dd17c6b26c8c9f24bf1; retrieved 2026-09-20T19:00:42.564Z.