Two Killed in Piper PA-30 Accident Near West Chicago, Illinois

An NTSB investigation is open into the December 17 accident, and the cause has not been determined.

By AI ReporterUpdated Aug 7, 2026, 10:03 a.m. ET

people were killed when a twin-engine was involved in an accident near West Chicago, Illinois, on December 17, 2025, at about 7:49 p.m. local time, according to the accident record. This remains a developing event and details may change. The accident record lists people on board and fatalities, and states that the aircraft sustained substantial damage. The flight is classified in the record as a Part 91 general aviation flight. The National Transportation Safety Board is listed as the investigating body, and the investigation is open. The cause has not been determined. The accident record identifies the aircraft as a registered . Aircraft registry records describe as a 1969 twin-engine piston landplane with Lycoming IO-320 series engines, serial number 30-1839, 56 years old, registered in the United States. Registry records list the registered owner as Peregrine Aviation LLC; the owner of record is not necessarily the operator of the flight, the pilot, or otherwise connected to it. FAA registration data compiled by city-data.com and FlightAware list the company as the LLC registrant of the aircraft with a certificate issue date of 08/06/2013 and an address in DuPage County, Illinois; no company website, business description, operating certificate or list of officers could be located in the sources searched, and no evidence of flight training, charter or other commercial activity was found. As a matter of record, the NTSB database, which begins in 2008, contains 66 other cases involving the , of which 18 involved a fatality. That count is not a safety rate and says nothing about the cause of this accident. Weather observations recorded at Dupage Airport (KDPA), .8 miles away and three minutes from the reported time of the accident, show wind from 160 degrees at 9 knots, visibility 8 statute miles, clear skies and a temperature of 33°F. Geographic reference data places West Chicago in DuPage County at an elevation of 787 feet, .8 miles southeast of Dupage Airport. The measurement is an instrument reading and not a statement of cause.

Was this report accurate and useful?

Reference data

From aircraft and geographic registries, not from the news sources. Registry records can be out of date, and describe the aircraft and the place only — they say nothing about what happened.

Registration: N8693Y
Type: Piper PA-30 — twin-engine piston landplane
Engines: LYCOMING IO-320 SERIES
Built: 1969-01-01 (56 years old)
Registered owner: Peregrine Aviation LlcThe owner of record is not necessarily the operator, the pilot, or otherwise connected to the flight.
Terrain elevation: 787 ft
Nearest aerodrome: 2.8 miles SE of Dupage Airport (KDPA/DPA)

Sources

Revision history

Version 27 Aug 2026, 14:03current
No new facts on the record; wording tightened and owner-background source URLs cited.
Version 15 Aug 2026, 19:09
First published.

How we work

This site models an investigative reporter rather than a wire desk. The aim is the most complete, accurate and timely account we can assemble — all three, not a trade between them. Reports go out within minutes of the coverage they are built from, carrying context a newsroom would otherwise need a day and a records request to gather: what has happened at this place before, what the operator’s record is, which aircraft it actually was.

Reports are built from primary sources — accident and court records, official registries, weather observations, agency statements — and from reputable news organisations, each named where their reporting is used. Facts are extracted before anything is written, and every one must be supported by a quotation found in the source itself; the model that writes the report is given only those verified facts and never sees the article, so it cannot introduce a detail no source stated.

Where sources disagree we publish the disagreement, attributed, rather than picking a figure. Where a fact comes from a record rather than a reporter, we say so, and the language matches: an instrument reading is never described as something anyone confirmed. Some things are deliberately withheld — a suspect is not named until an agency names them on the record, victims until families or officials release them — and corrections appear as visible revisions, never as silent edits.

None of that makes a report true. A quotation check proves a source said something, not that it was right, and an automated system can be confidently wrong in ways the checks do not catch. If something here is wrong, the feedback above is how it gets found. The full methodology, including what we refuse to publish.