CHI07FA032 · Cessna
Cessna · Accident: in flight encounter with weather while maneuvering
From Crookston Municipal Kirkwood Field (CKN) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI07FA032
- 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
- 2 · 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
Cessna
- 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
- N9850G
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Crookston Municipal Kirkwood Field (CKN), Crookston, MNTo not recorded
- 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 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
- Visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC)
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Spatial disorientation
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, inadvertent
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 took off in deteriorating meteorological conditions and impacted the ground about 1 mile from the departure airport, fatally injuring both occupants. The pilot held a private pilot certificate and had accumulated 102.5 hours of total flight experience but only 4.6 hours of simulated instrument experience; he had no actual flying experience in instrument conditions. Near the time of the accident, the weather was reported as a ceiling of 200 feet above the ground with snow and 1 mile of visibility. It is likely that the non-instrument rated private pilot’s decision to take off in deteriorating weather conditions was due to his lack of flying experience; once he took off into the instrument meteorological conditions, he became spatially disoriented and was unable to maintain control of the airplane. Examination of the airplane revealed no pre-impact anomalies.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadvertent flight into instrument meteorological conditions which led to his spatial disorientation and subsequent loss of control. Factors were the snow, the low ceiling, and the pilot's lack of instrument flight experience.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI07FA032
- Event ID
- 20061208X01764
- Case number
- CHI07FA032
- 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 2006-12-02.
- API snapshot SHA-256: d52696b372e853c8d8bceaeb524832e71cb2ade6fe39d431da2f49aa4077926f; retrieved 2026-09-20T16:58:28.673Z.