CHI04CA164 · Cessna 401
Cessna 401 · Accident: hard landing
From Mount Vernon Outland Airport (MVN) to Mount Vernon Outland Airport (MVN)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI04CA164
- 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
- 0 · 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 401
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 401
- 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
- N3234Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mount Vernon Outland Airport (MVN), Mt. Vernon, ILTo Mount Vernon Outland Airport (MVN)
- 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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 › Flare, misjudged
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 sustained substantially damaged during a hard landing. The left main landing gear subsequently collapsed and the airplane departed the left side of the runway, contacting two runway lights in the process. A witness reported that the accident aircraft turned a "close-in" left base at a "high power setting." He recalled thinking that the pilot was going to execute a "low level, high speed pass." The aircraft did not appear to him to be in a normal landing descent profile. According to this witness, the aircraft crossed the runway threshold approximately 35 feet above ground level (agl) and the power was reduced to idle. The aircraft leveled about 30 feet agl and subsequently settled to 5-10 feet agl. As it approached the intersecting runway, the aircraft "dropped" and landed on all three landing gear. He noted that a "large cloud" of smoke rose from all three wheels. After a ground roll of about 100 feet, the aircraft slowly began to settle onto its left wing and he could hear the propeller begin to hit the ground. Weather conditions recorded by the MVN Automated Weather Observing System (AWOS) at 1755 were clear skies and winds from 020 degrees at 5 knots. At 1855, the AWOS recorded clear skies and calm winds. According to the accident report filed by the pilot, his most recent flight review was completed in July 1986. His most recent medical certificate was issued on May 11, 1999. The pilot did not include a narrative in his accident report.
Probable cause
The pilot's misjudgment of the landing flare. Contributing factors were the pilot's failure to execute a stabilized approach for landing. An additional factor was the presence of the runway lights.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI04CA164
- Event ID
- 20040716X00994
- Case number
- CHI04CA164
- 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: 1984ea6554240fe3019f31ce80d1e21019eff0e1402061d70ba1cdcf4d251b33; retrieved 2026-09-22T07:17:33.269Z.