ATL95FA044 · Piper PA-28-161
Piper PA-28-161 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From DeKalb Peachtree Airport (PDK) to Lafayette Municipal Airport (3M7)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL95FA044
- 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
- 1 · 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-28-161
- 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
- N75PF
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From DeKalb Peachtree Airport (PDK), Chamblee, GATo Lafayette Municipal Airport (3M7), Lafayette, 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
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
SEVERAL HOURS AFTER THE FLIGHT'S DEPARTURE, THE AIRPLANE HAD NOT ARRIVED AT THE DESTINATION AIRPORT. BASED UPON RADAR DATA, A SEARCH WAS STARTED IN AN AREA ABOUT 80 MILES SOUTH OF WHERE THE AIRPLANE WAS SUBSEQUENTLY FOUND. SEVERAL DAYS LATER THE AIRPLANE WAS LOCATED AT THE 1500 FOOT LEVEL OF A MOUNTAIN RIDGE. THE AIRPLANE WAS LOCATED, AFTER AN EYEWITNESS REPORTED A LOW FLYING AIRPLANE NEAR THE ACCIDENT SITE ON THE DAY OF THE ACCIDENT. THE WITNESS ALSO REPORTED LOW CEILINGS IN THE VICINITY OF THE ACCIDENT SITE AT THE APPROXIMATE TIME OF THE ACCIDENT. EXAMINATION OF THE AIRFRAME FAILED TO DISCLOSE A MECHANICAL FAILURE OR SYSTEM MALFUNCTION.
Probable cause
THE PILOT'S INADEQUATE PREFLIGHT PLANNING, AND HIS CONTINUED VFR FLIGHT INTO INSTRUMENT WEATHER CONDITIONS WHICH RESULTED IN THE COLLISION WITH THE MOUNTAIN. A FACTOR WAS LOW CEILINGS.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL95FA044
- Event ID
- 20001207X02813
- Case number
- ATL95FA044
- 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: 2dc34d6aae99a866e8aff5003f215b57f3b089fa9e37ad04dbe70b88a0f1976a; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:53:21.082Z.