CHI07FA176 · Beech A36TC
Beech A36TC · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Dupage Airport (DPA) to Airlake Airport (LVN)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI07FA176
- 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
Beech A36TC
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 36
- 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
- N3671S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dupage Airport (DPA), West Chicago, ILTo Airlake Airport (LVN), Lavkeville, MN
- 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 › Spatial disorientation
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, 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 private, non-instrument rated pilot departed in visual meteorological conditions (VMC) and requested visual flight rules (VFR) flight following to his destination. When he neared his destination, he contacted approach control and reported that his altitude was 2,500 feet above mean sea level (msl). Approach control informed the pilot that there were moderate to heavy rain showers over the destination airport. The pilot reported that he was experiencing "poor visibility" and was considering turning 180 degrees to "go back." Approach control informed the pilot that instrument meteorological conditions prevailed north of his position with moderate to heavy rain showers. The pilot reported, "We're, we're kinda in the soup at this point." The pilot reported that he was turning to the south and soon after the airplane was lost from radar contact. A witness reported that he heard an airplane and then saw the accident airplane descending through a cloud layer that was about 400 - 500 feet above the ground. The airplane was in about a 50-degree nose down attitude with the airplane's engine producing "cruise power." He reported that the airplane was flying at a high rate of speed for about four seconds until he heard the airplane impact the terrain. The observed weather in the area of the accident was reported as marginal VMC and instrument meteorological conditions. The inspection of the airplane revealed no preexisting anomalies.
Probable cause
The pilot's continued flight into instrument meteorological conditions, which resulted in spatial disorientaton and loss of control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI07FA176
- Event ID
- 20070628X00822
- Case number
- CHI07FA176
- 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: 00185024717683853f9a7a976c75d7bb5ca291877f783ad52cf3563c596a2596; retrieved 2026-09-20T16:32:15.447Z.