CHI95FA061 · Piper PA-46-350P
Piper PA-46-350P · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From an unrecorded airport to Guntersville Municipal Joe Starnes Field (8A1)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI95FA061
- 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
- 3 · 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
Piper PA-46-350P
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-46
- 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
- N133MA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Guntersville Municipal Joe Starnes Field (8A1), Guntersville, AL
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Design stress limits of aircraft, exceeded
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE AIRPLANE DEPARTED ON RUNWAY 31 IN INSTRUMENT METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS (IMC) AND TURNED RIGHT TO A HEADING OF 090 DEGREES. RADAR CONTACT (ARTS TAG) WAS ACQUIRED ABOUT 1 TO 2 MILES NORTH OF THE AIRPORT. REPORTEDLY, THE ARTS TAG WOULD TYPICALLY BE ACQUIRED AS THE AIRPLANE CLIMBED THROUGH AN ALTITUDE OF ABOUT 700 FEET AGL. SUBSEQUENTLY, THE AIRPLANE CRASHED ABOUT 2 MILES NORTH OF THE AIRPORT. A WITNESS REPORTED HEARING A LOUD ENGINE NOISE BEFORE THE PLANE CRASHED. THE WRECKAGE PATH WAS ORIENTED ALONG A WESTERLY HEADING AND OVER AN AREA OF ABOUT 380 FEET. THERE WAS EVIDENCE OF AN IN-FLIGHT BREAKUP. AN OUTBOARD PORTION OF THE RIGHT WING WAS FOUND ABOUT 150 FEET FROM THE MAIN IMPACT CRATER. AN EXAMINATION REVEALED THE RIGHT WING HAD FAILED NEAR THE PRODUCTION SEAM. THE RIGHT SPAR EXHIBITED FEATURES 'TYPICAL OF AN UPWARD BENDING OVERSTRESS SEPARATION.' EXAMINATION REVEALED NO OTHER EVIDENCE OF PREIMPACT AIRCRAFT OR ENGINE MALFUNCTION. THE AIRPLANE'S GROSS WEIGHT WAS ESTIMATED TO BE ABOUT 4696 POUNDS; ITS MAX LIMIT WAS 4300 POUNDS. THE PILOT'S LOGBOOK INDICATED THAT HE HAD FLOWN ONLY 2 INSTRUMENT APPROACHES IN THE PREVIOUS 14 MONTHS.
Probable cause
FAILURE OF THE PILOT TO MAINTAIN CONTROL OF THE AIRPLANE, WHILE CLIMBING IN INSTRUMENT METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS (IMC) AFTER TAKEOFF. FACTORS RELATED TO THE ACCIDENT WERE: FOG, LOW CEILING, THE PILOT'S LACK OF RECENT INSTRUMENT EXPERIENCE, AND THE EXCESSIVE GROSS WEIGHT OF THE AIRPLANE.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI95FA061
- Event ID
- 20001206X02695
- Case number
- CHI95FA061
- 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: 2c41f9a00bc7d7f781d1be89c8bc11b211fff04558036c2207c042eba8812276; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:54:34.121Z.