CEN15LA195 · Quad City CHALLENGER - II
Quad City CHALLENGER - II · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Rosenbaum Field (3WI9) to Rosenbaum Field (3WI9)
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
- CEN15LA195
- 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
Quad City CHALLENGER - II
- Aircraft type
- Quad City CHALLENGER -
- 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
- N30796
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rosenbaum Field (3WI9), Chippewa Falls, WITo Rosenbaum Field (3WI9), Chippewa Falls, WI
- Aircraft age
- About 13 years (built 2002)
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern downwind
- 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
- Personnel issues › Physical
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While the airplane was on the downwind leg of the traffic pattern at the pilot's home airport, witnesses observed it enter into a steep dive that continued to ground contact in an open field. Postaccident examination of the airframe and engine revealed no evidence of mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation.
The recreational pilot's medical history included coronary artery disease treated with multivessel bypass surgery. The autopsy documented severe coronary artery disease and damage to the heart muscle; including myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle), which placed the pilot at severe risk of a cardiac arrhythmia (irregular heart rhythm) and incapacitation. Based on the autopsy findings and the pilot's medical history, he most likely became incapacitated due to a cardiovascular event secondary to his severe heart disease and recent myocarditis.
Probable cause
The pilot’s incapacitation due to a cardiovascular event, which resulted in a loss of control and subsequent impact with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN15LA195
- Event ID
- 20150413X23104
- Case number
- CEN15LA195
- 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, 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: b3063b797178060a809d8122a3f0e906a9e20e7003cb8b8ee3e308a44f70aed7; retrieved 2026-09-14T17:35:41.326Z.