CHI07FA182 · North American Navion
North American Navion · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Waterloo Regional Airport (ALO) to Georgetown-Scott County Regional Airport (27K)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI07FA182
- 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
North American Navion
- Aircraft type
- North American NAVION
- 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
- N8804H
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Waterloo Regional Airport (ALO), Waterloo, IATo Georgetown-Scott County Regional Airport (27K), Georgetown, KY
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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 › Became lost/disoriented, encountered
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, continued
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 following a descent in a right turn through instrument meteorological conditions. The left and right seated airplane occupants were both non-instrument rated private pilots. An examination of the wreckage revealed no pre-impact anomalies which would have precluded normal airplane operations. The left seat pilot was at high risk for obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), which is strongly associated with obesity and high blood pressure requiring multiple medications. Obstructive sleep apnea, if present and untreated, results in significant impairment and increased accident risk. The actual presence or possible role of possible OSA in this accident could not be conclusively determined, though such a disorder could have adversely affected the left seat pilot’s decision-making regarding initiating or continuing flight into deteriorating visibility and/or his responses to such conditions once he encountered them. The left seat pilot did not have a current medical certificate.
Probable cause
The non-instrument rated pilot's continued flight into instrument meteorological conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI07FA182
- Event ID
- 20070627X00818
- Case number
- CHI07FA182
- 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: 9dae91cfbb851979c8e86eaef3813619dddd6639e022bc505a7cab95a2ae6173; retrieved 2026-09-20T16:31:34.469Z.