Planemasters Cessna 208 B accident
Cessna 208 B · Accident: medical event en route
From Wichita Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport (ICT) to Hays Regional Airport (HYS)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN20LA122
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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 208 B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 208
- 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
- N274PM
- Operator
- Planemasters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wichita Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport (ICT), Wichita, KSTo Hays Regional Airport (HYS), Hays, KS
- Aircraft age
- About 22 years (built 1998)
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- Medical event
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Physical
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was conducting a Part 135 on-demand cargo flight in instrument meteorological conditions. After executing a second missed approach, he informed air traffic control (ATC) of his intentions to divert to an airport located about 36 miles to the southeast.
About 7 minutes after executing the second missed approach, the pilot began making unintelligible radio communications that ATC characterized as very garbled and difficult to understand, “almost hypoxic.” ATC then instructed the pilot to utilize oxygen.
About 19 minutes after the second missed approach, ATC informed the pilot that the airplane had descended 1,600 ft, not following assigned course vectors or instructions and asked if everything was alright, to which no response was received. After attempting to relay communications through other airplanes in the area, an unintelligible response was received from the accident airplane. ATC then made numerous transmissions to the accident pilot urging him to utilize oxygen and open a window. No further communications were received from the accident airplane.
A witness reported that he saw the airplane descend out of a low overcast cloud layer at a high rate of descent. The airplane then abruptly transitioned into a steep climb before re-entering the clouds. A few seconds later, he heard the airplane impact terrain and responded to the accident site.
The sudden change in communications from the pilot indicates a possible impairment. When combined with the ATC data, the witness account, and the lack of any mechanical irregularities or malfunctions with the airplane, it is likely the pilot experienced difficulty controlling the airplane due to impairment. While the pilot was at an increased risk for an acute cardiovascular event, the extremely limited available medical evidence leaves no way to quantify that risk and no evidence regarding whether such an event occurred. As a result, whether the pilot was incapacitated by an acute medical event cannot be determined from the available medical information.
Probable cause
An infight loss of control as a result of pilot impairment, the cause of which could not be determined.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN20LA122
- Event ID
- 20200317X33838
- Case number
- CEN20LA122
- 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, cause areas. 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: 970f3dac3e38d7e49bffa3b975176331525846441c86b9b5a8022b2e62bdb305; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:12:46.438Z.