Air Wisconsin Flight 965
Swearingen 226TC · Loss of control after double engine flame-out
From Appleton International Airport (ATW) to Lincoln Airport (LNK)
Event
- 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
- Unknown
- Event fatalities
- 13 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- Occupants
- 15
- Survivors
- 2
- InjuriesFatal: death within 30 days. Serious: over 48 hours in hospital within a week, most broken bones, severe bleeding, nerve or organ damage, or serious burns. Minor: anything less. Glossary
- 2
- 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
- Airline
- 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
Swearingen 226TC
- Aircraft type
- Swearingen 226
- 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
- N650S
- Operator
- Air Wisconsin
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Appleton International Airport (ATW)To Lincoln Airport (LNK)
- 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 121: Air carrier (scheduled domestic passenger service)
- 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
- Engine failure or malfunction
- 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
- Miscellaneous acts, conditions › Failure of two or more engines
- Pilot in command › Improper in-flight decisions or planning
- Powerplant › Other
Approximate · Coordinates from the Wikipedia article; not checked against an investigation report.
From the Wikipedia article
Air Wisconsin Flight 965 (registration N650S) was a flight operated by Air Wisconsin that crashed near Valley, Nebraska, on June 12, 1980. The crash was caused by poor weather conditions making the engines fail and failure to recontrol the aircraft.
Accident
The aircraft operating Flight 965, a Swearingen SA226-TC Metro II, left Outagamie County Regional Airport on a one-stop flight to Lincoln Municipal Airport at 12:45 on June 12, 1980. The flight stopped at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and then continued on to Lincoln Municipal Airport.
While en route but nearing its destination the aircraft experienced severe turbulence and was cleared to successively lower altitudes in an attempt to avoid the turbulence. During the descent the aircraft entered a region of severe precipitation, which caused both engines to flame-out due to very high levels of water ingestion. The crew managed to re-light both engines but lost control and impacted the ground. The aircraft struck the ground in a slightly nose down and right wing low attitude, bounced and then struck the ground a second time, sliding along the ground coming to a rest inverted. Both crew members and eleven of the thirteen passengers were killed in the accident. One of the thirteen passengers killed was Walter Rumsey, a smokejumper that survived the 1949 Mann Gulch fire in Montana that killed thirteen smokejumpers.
Investigation and cause
Investigation
The investigation focused on why the aircraft was flown deliberately into a region of very extreme weather, without air traffic control informing the crew of the weather or the on-board weather detection system indicating the extreme weather.
The direct cause of the crash was determined as flight into extreme weather causing the engines to flame-out and failure to maintain control during the recovery. Contributory causes were the failure of air traffic services to warn of the extreme weather and the inability of the aircraft's weather radar to penetrate even moderate precipitation, leaving the crew unaware of the extreme precipitation in the weather ahead.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Air Wisconsin Flight 965” (revision 1339386586, retrieved 2026-09-18) by its authors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Extracted as plain text: references, tables, images and some sections are left out. Read the article
NTSB remarks
CONTD INTO AREA OF SVR TSTMS.FLAMEOUT/PWR LOSS FM PCPN.CRITICAL WX NOT DISEMD.PCPN RDCD RADAR RTRN
NTSB's remark from its 1962–1981 archive, as recorded (abbreviated, at most 98 characters): the archive has no narrative
Sources
Wikipedia article: Air Wisconsin Flight 965
- Article
- Air Wisconsin Flight 965
- Revision
- 1339386586 · 2026-02-20 · retrieved 2026-09-18
- Wikidata
- Q19864044
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record
- Event ID
- 19800612P083031
- Case number
- Unknown
- Dataset
- historical-pre1982
- Source SHA-256
- abe1a933b4b73583d61684309f7f0610c281e3c1de3537c6471bf2a98ba6481d
Where each value comes from
- Record
- Wikipedia article "Air Wisconsin Flight 965" (page 44327873, revision 1339386586); merged with NTSB case NTSB19800612P083031 (PRE1982 tblFirstHalf (one row per aircraft, grouped by date, place and time))
- Date
- NTSB record NTSB19800612P083031: PRE1982 DATE_OCCURRENCE
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site; country from NTSB record NTSB19800612P083031
- Map position
- Wikipedia: Wikipedia article coordinates
- Aircraft, operator and route
- NTSB record NTSB19800612P083031: PRE1982 REGIST_NO, ACFT_MAKE, ACFT_MODEL; gaps from Wikipedia infobox: aircraft type, registration, operator, origin and destination; route airports from the linked airport articles' Wikidata codes (OurAirports)
- Operation
- NTSB record NTSB19800612P083031: operated under Part 121: Air carrier (scheduled domestic passg.svc)
- Fatalities
- NTSB record NTSB19800612P083031: PRE1982 TOTAL_ABRD_FATAL of each aircraft, plus people on the ground and others outside the aircraft
- Ground fatalities
- NTSB record NTSB19800612P083031: events.inj_f_grnd
- Summary
- Wikipedia infobox: summary
Source notes (4)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "Air Wisconsin Flight 965" and NTSB case NTSB19800612P083031, matched by the same aircraft registration and date. For this US event the NTSB's values are used where the two differ; each value names its source.
- From NTSB's 1962-1981 archive (PRE1982), which holds at most a short remark (98 characters, abbreviated) instead of a narrative; the accident type, phase of flight, causes and conditions are NTSB's codes, decoded as the archive defines them.
- Reviewed means this record passed the site's consistency check, not that it was checked against a narrative or report - there is none to check against.
- The operation category is mapped from the archive's operator and operation codes and has not been reviewed.