CHI05FA260 · Piper PA-32-300
Piper PA-32-300 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water on approach
From Fulton County Airport (RCR) to Wabash Municipal Airport (IWH)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI05FA260
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-32-300
- 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
- N4032R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fulton County Airport (RCR), Rochester, INTo Wabash Municipal Airport (IWH), Wabash, IN
- 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
- 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 collision with terrain/water
- 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 › Spatial disorientation
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 while maneuvering to land at night. The pilot had recently resumed flying after a long period of not flying. In March 1990, the pilot reported his total flight time was 150 hours. In June 2005, the pilot reported his total flight time was 150 hours and that he had not flown within the previous six months. The pilot's flight logbook indicated that his total night flight experience was about 17 hours. The pilot's flight logbook also indicated that he had not flown at night in over 15 years. Night visual meteorological conditions prevailed at the time of the accident. The ground visibility was 6 statute miles due to moderate haze. The accident occurred after civil twilight with 41-percent of the moon's visible disk illuminated. The airplane impacted about 1/3 nm south of the runway 9 threshold. The airplane impacted left wing low into a flat, cultivated soybean field. The airplane subsequently exploded and a ground fire ensued. The wreckage debris path was over 160 feet long. No mechanical anomalies were noted with the airframe, engine, or propeller that could be associated with a preexisting condition that would have prevented normal operation. Airport personnel verified after the accident that the runway 9/27 runway lighting systems were operational.
Probable cause
The pilot's spatial disorientation that resulted in his failure to maintain clearance from terrain. Factors to the accident were the pilot's lack of recent night experience and the hazy night conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI05FA260
- Event ID
- 20050915X01473
- Case number
- CHI05FA260
- 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 2005-09-11.
- API snapshot SHA-256: b22e98fe7236b892e3f5c8c4db8f10f393e8b67f9d9db5e2ebc3ed8f153419ae; retrieved 2026-09-20T17:53:38.174Z.