Skip to content

Atlas / NTSB / CHI87FA009

NTSB CAROL · Event

Event CHI87FA009

1986-10-23 WEST CHICAGO, Illinois, United States Airport · DPA Fatal 1 aircraft Status: Completed

Aircraft involved

Factual narrative

THE PLT (A PART TIME EMPLOYEE OF THE OWNER) WAS FERRYING THE ACFT FOR MAINTENANCE. WITNESSES, WHO SAW THE PLT BFR TAKE- OFF, NOTED THAT HIS SPEECH WAS SLURRED & THAT HE SEEMED ANGRY BECAUSE A TUG WOULD NOT START. ONE WITNESS CHARACTERIZED HIM AS BEING 'VERY MAD' & SAID HIS FACE WAS 'FLUSHED RED.' THE ACFT WAS OBSERVED TO TAKEOFF IN A HI NOSE-UP ATTITUDE & CLIMB ABOUT 500 TO 1000 FT BFR TURNING TO THE SW & LEVELING. SUBSEQUENTLY, THE PLANE TURNED BACK TOWARD THE ARPT, THEN IT CRASHED & BURNED APRX 1-1/2 MI SSW OF THE ARPT WHILE ON A HDG OF NE. IMPACT OCCURRED WHILE THE ACFT WAS DSCNDG IN A SLIGHTLY LEFT WING LOW ATTITUDE. THE WRECKAGE WAS SCATTERED OVER AN AREA THAT WAS APRX 600 FT LONG & ABOUT 45 FT WIDE AT THE WIDEST POINT. ACCORDING TO WITNESSES, THE ENGS WERE OPERATING NORMALLY WHEN THE ACFT CRASHED. NO PREIMPACT MECHANICAL PROBLEM WAS FND. A TOXICOLOGY CHECK OF THE PLT'S LIVER TISSUE FLUID SHOWED AN ALCOHOL LVL OF 0.226%. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database (Pre-2008 Archive) Retrieved: 2026-02-12

Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file NTSB_1986_CHI87FA009.txt. Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb. Full investigation docket on data.ntsb.gov ↗.

Related research

What the literature says.

Academic papers and agency reports matching this event's aircraft type or causal vocabulary (maintenance). Sourced from NASA NTRS, NTSB Safety Studies, FAA CAMI, AOPA Air Safety Institute, Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons, arXiv, and the Semantic Scholar academic graph.

Browse the full corpus — academia portal ↗