CEN13FA073 · Cessna 421C
Cessna 421C · Accident: windshear or thunderstorm en route
From West Houston Airport (IWS) to Tulsa Riverside Airport (RVS)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN13FA073
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna 421C
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 421
- 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
- N67SR
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From West Houston Airport (IWS), Houston, TXTo Tulsa Riverside Airport (RVS), Tulsa, OK
- 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
- Windshear or thunderstorm
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While in cruise flight, the twin-engine airplane encountered a severe thunderstorm that likely contained hail up to 1.25 inches in diameter. After penetrating the thunderstorm, the airplane's structure failed, which was evidenced by the pieces of the airplane being found up to 0.6 mile away from the main wreckage. The horizontal tail, which was found 0.25 mile from the main wreckage, had dents on the upper surface that were consistent with in-flight hail damage. The left horizontal stabilizer had failed in an upward direction, and the right horizontal stabilizer had failed in a downward direction, consistent with an extreme left roll rate. In addition, both left and right outboard wing sections were partially separated from the remainder of the wing. Although there was no record of the pilot having obtained a FAA weather briefing, it was not possible to determine if the pilot used other sources to obtain weather information prior to the flight. Records of in-flight communications indicated that the pilot was advised of adverse weather, including thunderstorms and moderate, heavy, and extreme precipitation about 15 minutes before his last transmission. At that time, the airplane was 40 miles from the storm. In addition, the pilot confirmed during communications that the airplane was equipped with on-board weather radar (which provided real-time weather), and the controller authorized him to deviate course, if necessary.
Probable cause
The pilot’s decision to continue the flight into an area of extreme weather, which led to the in-flight encounter with a thunderstorm and structural failure of the wings and tail.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN13FA073
- Event ID
- 20121127X24828
- Case number
- CEN13FA073
- 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: 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 2012-11-27.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 073306c3691f492e444a4fd45caf6585cbd8c2a025948bea0a349c7c0cdd26b2; retrieved 2026-09-14T15:49:15.511Z.