ATL94FA082 · Piper PA-28-181
Piper PA-28-181 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From X17 · Plant City, FL to Clarksville–Montgomery County Regional Airport (CKV)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL94FA082
- 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
- 2 · 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
- Unknown
Piper PA-28-181
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N39770
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From X17 · Plant City, FLTo Clarksville–Montgomery County Regional Airport (CKV), Clarksville, TN
- 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 · 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 encounter with weather
- 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)
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Opelika, AL, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
THE NON-INSTRUMENT RATED PILOT WAS ON A FLIGHT FROM PLANT CITY, FL, TO CLARKSVILLE, TN. NO FLIGHT PLAN HAD BEEN FILED. LOCAL WITNESSES STATED THERE WERE BLACK CLOUDS IN THE ACCIDENT AREA; THEY ESTIMATED THE CEILING WAS ABOUT 800'. THE WIND WAS FROM THE NORTHWEST & GUSTY. THE AIRCRAFT WAS SEEN TO EXIT THE BASE OF THE CLOUDS IN A NOSE DOWN SPIRAL. AN IN-FLIGHT BREAKUP OF THE AIRCRAFT OCCURRED; WRECKAGE WAS FOUND OVER A 1500' AREA. THE RIGHT WING, BOTH STABILATORS & THE VERTICAL STABILIZER WERE FOUND AT A REMOTE DISTANCE FROM THE MAIN WRECKAGE. UPWARD DEFORMATION WAS FOUND, WHERE THE RIGHT WING & STABILATORS HAD SEPARATED. RECORDS SHOWED THAT ON 12/30/93, MAINTENANCE PERSONNEL HAD REPLACED BOTH REAR FUSELAGE-TO-WING ATTACH POINT BRACKETS. THE REAR ATTACH POINT BRACKETS WERE FOUND IN PLACE FOR BOTH WINGS (ON BOTH SIDES OF THE FUSELAGE), BUT NEITHER THE RIGHT NOR THE LEFT WING REAR ATTACH BOLT WAS FOUND. NO SIGN OF STRETCHING OR STRESS WAS FOUND AT THE BOLT HOLES IN THE BRACKETS. THE PILOT HAD ACCUMULATED 18 HOURS OF FLIGHT TIME IN PREPARATION FOR AN INSTRUMENT RATING & HAD PASSED THE WRITTEN TEST, BUT HE HAD NOT TAKEN A PRACTICAL TEST FOR THE RATING.
Probable cause
LOSS OF AIRCRAFT CONTROL FOR AN UNKNOWN REASON. FACTORS RELATED TO THE ACCIDENT WERE: THE WEATHER CONDITIONS (CLOUDS WITH LOW CEILING), CONTINUED VFR FLIGHT BY THE PILOT INTO INSTRUMENT METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS (IMC), THE PILOT'S LACK OF INSTRUMENT EXPERIENCE, AND FAILURE OF MAINTENANCE PERSONNEL TO INSTALL THE REAR WING-TO-FUSELAGE ATTACH BOLTS.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL94FA082
- Event ID
- 20001206X01023
- Case number
- ATL94FA082
- 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: 5351b32728bedab3dbaed5cb426d6d452546e71b71b804f0180cdb90d17ad72e; retrieved 2026-09-21T00:11:45.686Z.