CEN09LA281 · Cessna 551
Ballard Aviation Cessna 551 · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Stillwater Regional Airport (KSWO) to Wichita Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport (KICT)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN09LA281
- 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
- 0 · 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 551
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 551
- 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
- N740JB
- Operator
- Ballard Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Stillwater Regional Airport (KSWO), Stillwater, OKTo Wichita Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport (KICT), Wichita, 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
- En route · cruise
- Defining eventThe 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
- Loss of control in flight
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that after leveling off at 16,000 feet with the autopilot engaged, he began to review his charts preparing for landing. When he went back to a visual scan of the instruments, he noted that the flight director was flagged off and that both the pilot and co-pilot attitude indicators were off. The pilot declared an emergency with air traffic control, reduced the throttles to idle, and pulled back on the controls. After the airplane came out of the bottom of the clouds and the pilot regained visual contact with the ground, the airplane was in a 60-degree left turn at approximately 80 knots of airspeed. After the pilot regained control, the flight director and all instruments began working again. The pilot then re-engaged the autopilot and continued to his destination, where he landed without further incident.
Examination of the flight director system, gyros, and attitude indicators at the aircraft manufacturer’s facilities failed to identify a failure or malfunction with the flight instruments.
Probable cause
The pilot's loss of control for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN09LA281
- Event ID
- 20090507X35030
- Case number
- CEN09LA281
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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. 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: 9504871a1881b2e64e26058d844ebe12c33ec98f262f50c5b9c054f3257d631d; retrieved 2026-09-15T11:01:39.295Z.