CHI06LA105 · Cessna 177
Cessna 177 · Accident: in flight collision with object while maneuvering
From Lawrence Municipal Airport (LWC) to Osage City Municipal Airport (53K)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI06LA105
- 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
- 1 · 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 177
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 177
- 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
- N34200
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lawrence Municipal Airport (LWC), Lawrence, KSTo Osage City Municipal Airport (53K), Osage City, KS
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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 object
- 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
- Wire, transmission
- 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 › Low altitude flight/maneuver, performed
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 conducting a pipeline patrol when it hit a power line and subsequently impacted the terrain. A witness reported that she observed the airplane flying west, paralleling Highway 20 at a low altitude. It was about two power line poles in height above the ground and the airplane was flying slow. The witness reported, "All of a sudden, the left wing went down and the right wing went up." The witness described the angle of bank as a perpendicular position, a 90-degree vertical bank. The airplane turned left into a gully and the left wing impacted the top wire of a power line. The inspection of the wreckage revealed that the outboard portion of the left wing at the aileron/flap juncture had separated at a 45-degree angle. A downed power line wire was found tangled in the wreckage. The post accident inspection of the airplane revealed no preexisting anomalies that could be associated with a pre-impact condition. An on-site inspection of the accident site revealed that 35 to 40 feet tall power lines provided power to several nearby residential customers. A power line crossed the highway near the site of the accident. There were no other power lines observed in the area that crossed the highway. The power line the airplane impacted paralleled the south (left) side of the highway.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain obstacle clearance from the power line during low altitude maneuvering. A factor was the power line.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI06LA105
- Event ID
- 20060412X00430
- Case number
- CHI06LA105
- 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: 44fd0c209f994d824e088626653fd402d01a79aeb86210c4505cf9d222863365; retrieved 2026-09-20T17:26:03.480Z.