CEN22FA042 · Cessna T310R
Cessna T310R · Accident: medical event during takeoff
From Chadron Municipal Airport (KCDR) to Northern Colorado Regional Airport (FNL)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN22FA042
- 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
- 3 · 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
Cessna T310R
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 310
- 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
- N310JA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chadron Municipal Airport (KCDR), Chadron, NETo Northern Colorado Regional Airport (FNL), Fort Collins, CO
- Aircraft age
- About 43 years (built 1978)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot departed on a personal flight in dark night visual meteorological conditions. The airplane impacted terrain northwest of the airport about 30 seconds after departure. The distribution of the debris was consistent with a wings-level, slightly nose-down impact. The airplane was destroyed by impact forces and a postimpact fire. Postaccident examination of the airframe and engines revealed no mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. Although toxicology results revealed that the pilot was taking at least two medications (chlorpheniramine and dextromethorphan) that may have impaired his performance, the fact that the medication levels were unquantifiable indicated that their levels were too low for them to have had significantly impairing effects at the time of the accident. According to the autopsy findings, the pilot was actively having a heart attack in the hours before the accident. This placed him at severely increased risk for acute impairment/incapacitation from chest pain, shortness of breath, feeling faint, or becoming unconscious. Any of these symptoms would have likely led to the low altitude loss of control identified in this crash. Therefore, the pilot’s ongoing myocardial infarction (heart attack) is the most likely cause of this accident.
Probable cause
The incapacitating effects of a myocardial infarction (heart attack), which resulted in the pilot's loss of airplane control and impact with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN22FA042
- Event ID
- 20211122104284
- Case number
- CEN22FA042
- 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 2021-11-22.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 75ed728a7a52fd36ff5b14924895421fcb47fd3a8853dabe0dc9817abbd03492; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:37:47.591Z.