CHI03LA282 · Cessna 140
Cessna 140 · Accident: in flight collision with object en route
From Edwardsburg, MI to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI03LA282
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Cessna 140
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 140
- 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
- N140GS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Edwardsburg, MITo not recorded
- 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 collision with object
- 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
- Wire, transmission
- 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 › Altitude/clearance, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane sustained substantial damage on impact with power lines and a lake. The airplane was observed flying low. The Sheriff's report stated, "[A boater] related that he was on a pontoon at the time that the plane involved in the crash came through the channel. He saw that the plane began to bank right and the wing struck the power line. The plane then spun and was on its belly on the water. The plane went down nose first, and he could barely see the tail of it, five or six feet under the water." Local visibility was reported as 10 statute miles and sky condition was clear. No pre-impact anomalies were observed. The airplane was not equipped with shoulder harnesses and was not required to have them installed.
Probable cause
The pilot not maintaining altitude/clearance from the power line during his low level cruise. Factors were the power transmission line, the lake, and low altitude flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI03LA282
- Event ID
- 20030827X01406
- Case number
- CHI03LA282
- 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 2003-08-24.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 66e68a7a163fec353ee3c14480e303646168bce46c97a2147e18476d2c26de68; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:59:00.398Z.