NYC99LA089 · American AA-5
American AA-5 · Accident: in flight collision with object en route
From Shenandoah Valley Regional Airport (SHD) to St Marys Municipal Airport (OYM)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC99LA089
- 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
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- 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
- General aviation
- 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
American AA-5
- Aircraft type
- American AA-5
- 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
- N8764J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Shenandoah Valley Regional Airport (SHD), Shenandoah, VATo St Marys Municipal Airport (OYM), ST MARYS, PA
- 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 91: General Aviation
- 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 · climb to cruise
- 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
- Visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC); 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Diverted attention
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Prior to departed the pilot was distracted, and forgot to initialize his GPS. The GPS was initialized during climb out causing the pilot to doubt its accuracy. While operating over a valley between partially obscured mountains, the airplane encountered turbulence. Weather at the time was 3,000 feet overcast with no restrictions to visibility. With the airplane less then 500 feet from the base of the clouds, the pilot focused his attention inside the cockpit to tune radio's and confirm his positions using a map. During this period, the pilot let the airplane climb into the overcast. 'I was not paying attention and I was close to the base of the clouds.' The airplane entered the clouds and the severity of the turbulence increased. The pilot initiated a climb, and started a left turn to proceed back to the south to regain VMC, but during the turn, and approximately 3,200 feet msl, the airplane struck a pine tree about 6 feet below its top. The pilot continued the climbing left turn, set the transponder to 7700, and transmitted a 'May Day.' About 5 minutes later, the pilot regained VMC, and landed the airplane at without further incident.
Probable cause
The pilot diverting his attention inside the cockpit, and allowing the airplane to enter instrument meteorological conditions, resulting in an in-flight collision with a tree.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC99LA089
- Event ID
- 20001205X00553
- Case number
- NYC99LA089
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- 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.
- API snapshot SHA-256: a752d4df97f002812579eab8aeff1bebd6741b491b7e160ae40b026a5a487c3a; retrieved 2026-09-22T15:29:24.564Z.