Dec. 9, Branson, Mo. / Cessna Citation

At 15:15 CST, a Cessna 525 struck a hillside 4.3 miles from the approach end of runway 11 at M. Graham Clark Airport. The pilot and five passengers were killed. The operations manager at Clark Airport said the pilot contacted him from St. Louis at 13:48 inquiring about the weather at the airport. The operations manager told the pilot the weather was pretty poor and gave him the most recent observation, which was a few hours old. The pilot requested a current observation, but before the operations manager could give it, another pilot departing the airport in a Cessna 421 gave a pilot report for the field. The departing pilot told the accident pilot the clouds were approximately 1,200 feet msl. The accident pilot radioed the airport manager and told him not to bother making another observation, that he was going to Springfield, Mo. Later the operations manager said he heard the pilot on the airports Unicom report that he was inbound on the GPS 11 approach. The controller at the Springfield Air Traffic Control Tower said she vectored the jet for the ILS approach to runway 2 at the Springfield-Branson Regional Airport but then the pilot changed his destination to Clark Airport and requested the GPS runway 11 approach.