CHI04FA025 · Commander Aircraft 114TC
Commander Aircraft 114TC · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Wiley Post Airport (PWA) to Hutchinson Municipal Airport (HUT)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI04FA025
- 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
Commander Aircraft 114TC
- Aircraft type
- Commander 114
- 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
- N6107Z
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wiley Post Airport (PWA), Oklahoma City, OKTo Hutchinson Municipal Airport (HUT), Hutchinson, 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
- Approach · IFR missed approach
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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 control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Diverted attention
- Pilot in command › Missed approach, performed
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 impacted terrain during a missed approach at night in instrument meteorological conditions. The pilot had been cleared for the instrument landing system (ILS) runway 13 approach into Hutchinson Municipal Airport. The decision altitude for the approach is 1,724 feet msl (200 feet agl). The pilot reported going missed approach after passing the middle marker at 1,600 feet msl (75 feet agl), based on aircraft radar track data. The missed approach instructions were to climb to 4,000 feet msl on runway heading and contact Wichita approach control. A plot of the radar track data showed the airplane in a climbing left turn. The aircraft's climbing left turn reached a maximum altitude of 2,000 feet msl (460 feet agl) before the airplane entered a descending left turn. The pilot was communicating with Wichita approach control during the left climbing turn. The airplane impacted off the left side of runway 22 on a 334-degree magnetic heading. The airplane impacted left wing first and the total wreckage debris path was approximately 280 feet long. An FAA test aircraft flew the ILS runway 13 approach after the accident and determined the approach was fully operational and tested satisfactory. The pilot held an instrument rating, but was not instrument current as required by federal aviation regulations. The weather at the time of the accident included overcast ceilings at 200 feet agl and visibilities between 1-1/4 and 2 sm. No pre-impact anomalies were found with the airframe or the engine.
Probable cause
The pilot's diverted attention during the missed approach which resulted in aircraft control not being maintained. Factors to the accident included the pilot not being current for instrument operations and the low cloud ceiling at night.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI04FA025
- Event ID
- 20031114X01904
- Case number
- CHI04FA025
- 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, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2003-11-03.
- API snapshot SHA-256: bfc6350268cf5a372376a15ec37c4325d6939b612af77c70bdcae2f62f943986; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:49:04.016Z.