2000 Superior Aviation accident near Fort Wayne
Swearingen SA226TC · The 2000 Superior Aviation accident near Fort Wayne occurred on 9 November 2000
From Fort Wayne International Airport (FWA) to General Mitchell International Airport (MKE)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI01FA032
- 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
- Event fatalities
- 1 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- Occupants
- Unknown
- Survivors
- 0
- 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
- 0 serious · 0 minor (NTSB)
- 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
Swearingen SA226TC
- Aircraft type
- Swearingen SA226
- 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
- N731AC
- Operator
- Superior Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fort Wayne International Airport (FWA), Fort Wayne, INTo General Mitchell International Airport (MKE), Milwaukee, WI
- 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 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
- Takeoff
- First occurrenceThe 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
- In flight collision with object
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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
- Electrical system › Failure
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
From the Wikipedia article
The 2000 Superior Aviation accident near Fort Wayne occurred on 9 November 2000. On that day the pilot of a Superior Aviation Fairchild Swearingen SA226-TC Metro II cargo aircraft, which was operating a cargo flight from Fort Wayne to Milwaukee, lost control of the aircraft shortly after take-off. In the incident the pilot, who was the only crew member on board, was killed and the aircraft was destroyed.
Accident sequence
The aircraft took off under instrument meteorological conditions from runway 14 of Fort Wayne Airport for the night-time cargo flight. Shortly after lift-off it clipped treetops, crashed to the ground at 01:23 local time and burned out. The pilot was killed.
Investigation and cause
Cause
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) took over the investigation into the cause of the accident. A local resident was questioned as an eyewitness; he stated that he had seen an aircraft fly over his house at low altitude. He compared the sound of the aircraft to the sound of a chainsaw rapidly cutting through a tree. Radar data showed a horseshoe-shaped flight profile of the aircraft. During the initial climb the aircraft had flown a left turn up to an altitude of 2,479 feet, after which the altitude had continuously decreased again while the left turn was maintained.
The NTSB found that during the initial climb a malfunction had occurred in the right DC electrical line, causing the attitude indicator to fail. The aircraft had not been equipped with an additional attitude indicator. The pilot had simply been overwhelmed by the workload resulting from his limited experience with the aircraft type being flown, the occurrence of the electrical malfunction at this critical moment and a low cloud ceiling, as well as the absence of a second pilot in the cockpit.
Translated into English with AI assistance from the German Wikipedia article “Flugunfall der Superior Aviation bei Fort Wayne 2000” (revision 269420535, retrieved 2026-09-19) by its authors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Extracted as plain text: references, tables, images and some sections are left out; the translation may contain errors, and long articles were cut to their first 700 words. Read the article
NTSB narrative
The airplane was destroyed on impact with trees and terrain after takeoff. A post-impact fire ensued. A courier stated that he put 14 cases and 5 bags into the airplane and that "everything took place as it normally does." A witness stated, "I heard a very low flying aircraft come directly over my house. ... It sounded very revved up like a chainsaw cutting through a tree at high speed." The accident airplane's radar returns, as depicted on a chart, exhibited a horseshoe shaped flight path. That chart showed that the airplane made a left climbing turn to a maximum altitude of 2,479 feet. That chart showed the airplane in a descending left turn after that maximum recorded altitude was attained. The operator reported the pilot had flown about 75 hours in the same make and model airplane and had flown about 190 hours in the last 90 days. The weather was: Wind 090 degrees at 7 knots; visibility 1 statute mile; present weather light rain, mist; sky condition overcast 200 feet; temperature 9 degrees C; dew point 9 degrees C. No pre-impact engine anomalies were found. NTSB's Materials Laboratory Division examined the annunciator panel and recovered light assemblies and stated, "Item '29' was a light assembly with an identification cover indicating that it was the '[Right-hand] AC BUS' light. Examination of the filaments in the two installed bulbs revealed that one had been stretched, deformed and fractured and the other had been stretched and deformed." The airplane manufacturer stated that the airplane's left-hand and right-hand attitude gyros are powered by the 115-volt alternating current essential bus. Two inverters are installed and one inverter is used at a time as selected by the inverter select switch. The inverter select switch is located on the right hand switch panel. The airplane was not equipped with a backup attitude gyro and was not required to be equipped with one. The airplane was certified with a minimum flight crew of one pilot. Subsequent to the accident, the operator transitioned "from the single pilot operation of our Fairchild Metroliner to the inclusion of a First Officer."
Probable cause
The indicated failure of the right hand AC bus during takeoff with low ceiling. The factors were the low ceiling, night, and the execssive workload the pilot experienced on takeoff with an electrical failure without a second in command.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
German Wikipedia article: Flugunfall der Superior Aviation bei Fort Wayne 2000
- Translation
- Into English with AI assistance; names of linked operators and aircraft types from Wikidata. It may contain errors.
- Revision
- 269420535 · 2026-08-06 · retrieved 2026-09-19
- Wikidata
- Q116535621
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record CHI01FA032
- Event ID
- 20001212X22263
- Case number
- CHI01FA032
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Where each value comes from
- Record
- de Wikipedia article "Flugunfall der Superior Aviation bei Fort Wayne 2000" (page 12388390, revision 269420535), translated into English with AI assistance; merged with NTSB case CHI01FA032 (events / aircraft)
- Date
- NTSB record CHI01FA032: NTSB narrative opening date, consistent with the API date and time (local date)
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site; country from NTSB record CHI01FA032
- Map position
- NTSB record CHI01FA032: events decimal coordinates
- Aircraft, operator and route
- NTSB record CHI01FA032: aircraft; gaps from Wikipedia infobox: aircraft type, registration, operator, origin and destination; route airports from the linked airport articles' Wikidata codes (OurAirports)
- Operation
- NTSB record CHI01FA032: operated under Part 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- Fatalities
- NTSB record CHI01FA032: NTSB API totalFatal
- Ground fatalities
- NTSB record CHI01FA032: NTSB API ongroundFatal
- Summary
- Wikipedia article lead
Source notes (3)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "2000 Superior Aviation accident near Fort Wayne" and NTSB case CHI01FA032, 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.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status. 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.