CHI05LA140 · Cessna 310C
Cessna 310C · Accident: loss of engine power during initial climb
From Ray Community Airport (57D) to Nauvoo, IL
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI05LA140
- 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 310C
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 310
- 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
- N311V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ray Community Airport (57D), Ray, MITo Nauvoo, IL
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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 engine power
- 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
- Flightcrew › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The twin-engine airplane was destroyed when it impacted the ground shortly after takeoff. There was a postimpact fire. The left seat pilot had just purchased the airplane. He did not possess a rating for multiengine airplanes. The right seat pilot was a certified flight instructor (CFI) and had a rating for multi-engine airplanes. He listed 62.5 hours total multi-engine experience, 32 hours experience as a multi-engine instructor, and 20.3 hours in the same make and model as the accident airplane. The CFI reported that shortly after takeoff, the left wing "dipped." He reported that he had no recollection of the accident sequence after that point. Both pilots listed "left engine failure" in the malfunction portion of their reports. Postaccident examination of the airplane failed to reveal any anomalies that could be determined to have existed prior to the impact.
Probable cause
The loss of power on the left engine for undetermined reasons and the flightcrew's failure to maintain aircraft control following the loss of power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI05LA140
- Event ID
- 20050712X00994
- Case number
- CHI05LA140
- 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: investigation status. 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: 9559e609b9b647aee34487216b0dcf257bf4b10771da78f8c9fdec6ffc8dc0b3; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:06:47.676Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: damage. The narrative states "The twin-engine airplane was destroyed when it impacted the ground shortly after takeoff. There was a postimpact fire."