CHI04LA129 · Hall Lancair IV-P
Hall Lancair IV-P · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Willow Run Airport (YIP) to Billings Logan International Airport (BIL)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI04LA129
- 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
- 3 · 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
Hall Lancair IV-P
- Aircraft type
- Hall LANCAIR IV-P
- 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
- N707SH
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Willow Run Airport (YIP), Ypsilanti, MITo Billings Logan International Airport (BIL), Billings, MT
- 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
- Stall/spin
- 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
- Atc personnel(artcc) › In flight weather avoidance assistance, not performed
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not possible
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 flew into a thunderstorm during cruise flight and subsequently entered a flat spin until impact with terrain. The airplane had been given a heading to avoid the adverse weather by Lansing approach control. During transfer of control between Lansing approach and Cleveland center, the Cleveland controller was advised that the aircraft had been given a heading to avoid the adverse weather. After the handoff, the Cleveland controller instructed the pilot to proceed direct to an en-route fix when able, but did not provide any information about radar-observed weather ahead of the aircraft. The Chicago center controller who next handled the airplane was briefed that the airplane was proceeding direct to the en-route fix and had not requested any weather deviations. About seven minutes after the handoff between Cleveland and Chicago centers, the pilot transmitted, "Center this is uh 707SH what do you show us in up here?" Aircraft and weather radar data showed the accident airplane flew into an area of level six precipitation (extreme weather) prior to a rapid loss of altitude. Several witnesses reported first hearing the sound of a revving aircraft engine before seeing the airplane descending rapidly in a spiraling descent. A pilot-rated witness reported that the airplane was in a "flat spin" before impacting the terrain. Before the pilot departed on the accident flight, he was given a weather briefing that indicated his route of flight would take him into areas of thunderstorms, moderate turbulence, and icing. According to available pilot flight records, the pilot did not have a current biennial flight review and was not instrument current, as required by federal aviation regulations. No pre-impact anomalies were found with the airplane during the post-accident inspection.
"THIS CASE WAS MODIFIED 11/16/2006."
Probable cause
The failure of Air Route Traffic Control Center controllers to provide adverse weather avoidance assistance as required by FAA directives, which led to the airplane's encounter with a thunderstorm and subsequent loss of control. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's decision to conduct flight into an area of known thunderstorms.
"THIS CASE WAS MODIFIED 11/16/2006."
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI04LA129
- Event ID
- 20040604X00740
- Case number
- CHI04LA129
- 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: 4d7e77d698a7d36cfc7620d20525794216ee25f85b23f290b32b4ca903e5a054; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:27:42.118Z.