CHI04FA044 · Piper PA-32-260
Piper PA-32-260 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Chicago Executive Airport (PWK) to Ankeny Regional Airport (IKV)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI04FA044
- 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
- 4 · 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-32-260
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N3733W
- Operator
- Dan Lawson
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chicago Executive Airport (PWK), Wheeling, ILTo Ankeny Regional Airport (IKV), Ankeny, IA
- 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 › Planning/decision, inadequate
- 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 when it impacted a cornfield during cruise flight. Night instrument meteorological conditions prevailed at the time of the accident. The flight was operating under visual flight rules (VFR), and no flight plan was filed. There was no record of the pilot contacting air traffic control facilities or Flight Service Stations while en route. There were no witnesses to the accident. The pilot was a private pilot but he was not instrument qualified. The pilot's logbook indicated that he flew 0.5 hours of night time 30 days prior to the accident, and that he recorded 3 landings to a full stop. The pilot's previous night flight, which was 0.6 hours in length, was logged nine months prior to the accident. The observed weather about 26 nautical miles west of the accident site, was: Winds 260 degrees at 7 knots, visibility 2 statute miles, light snow, ceiling 700 feet overcast, temperature 1 degree C, dew point 0 degree C, altimeter 29.89 inches of mercury. The postaccident inspection of the airplane revealed no preexisting anomalies that could be associated with a pre-impact condition.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate planning/decision resulting in VFR flight into IMC, and his failure to maintain terrain clearance resulting in in-flight collision with terrain. Contributing factors to the accident were the pilot's lack of an instrument rating, his lack of recent night flying experience, the dark night, and the low ceilings.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI04FA044
- Event ID
- 20031222X02073
- Case number
- CHI04FA044
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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 2003-12-18.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 1490662556a96d3c153db8fd6ed2615d783739a5f43f7d9d212e2fb9077df7c9; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:42:05.039Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: damage. The narrative states "The airplane was destroyed when it impacted a cornfield during cruise flight."