MIA95FA060 · Piper PA-28-236
Piper PA-28-236 · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From 29J · Rock Hill, SC to Washington County Airport (AFJ)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA95FA060
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-28-236
- 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
- N8423B
- Operator
- Janovich, Alvin C. · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 29J · Rock Hill, SCTo Washington County Airport (AFJ), Washington, 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
- 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 › Spatial disorientation
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
BEFORE DEPARTURE, THE NONINSTRUMENT-RATED PILOT RECEIVED A WEATHER BRIEFING. HE WAS ADVISED THAT IFR CONDITIONS WERE FORECASTED ALONG THE ENTIRE ROUTE OF THE PROPOSED FLIGHT. THE PILOT FILED AN IFR FLIGHT PLAN, AND BEFORE DEPARTURE FROM THE UNCONTROLLED AIRPORT, OBTAINED HIS IFR CLEARANCE. THE FLIGHT DEPARTED (WITH A 500-FOOT CEILING REPORTED AT A NEARBY AIRPORT) AND CLIMBED TO ABOUT 3,300 FEET. RADAR DATA REVEALED THAT THE AIRPLANE DEVIATED FROM THE ASSIGNED HEADING, AND ITS ALTITUDE BEGAN DECREASING. SUBSEQUENTLY, THE AIRPLANE COLLIDED WITH TREES, AND THEN THE GROUND IN A NOSE-LOW ATTITUDE. THE COCKPIT AND CABIN WERE EXTENSIVELY DAMAGED BY IMPACT AND A POSTCRASH FIRE. NO PREIMPACT FAILURE OR MALFUNCTION OF THE AIRFRAME, ENGINE, OR VACUUM PUMP WAS FOUND. AN ALTERNATE VACUUM SYSTEM HAD BEEN INSTALLED. EXAMINATION OF COMPONENTS OF THE AUTOPILOT SYSTEM REVEALED NO INDICATION THAT IT HAD BEEN ENGAGED.
Probable cause
THE NONINSTRUMENT-RATED PILOT'S FAILURE TO MAINTAIN CONTROL OF THE AIRPLANE DUE TO SPATIAL DISORIENTATION WHILE CONDUCTING FLIGHT IN INSTRUMENT METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS (IMC). A FACTOR RELATING TO THE ACCIDENT WAS: FAILURE OF THE PILOT TO FOLLOW PROCEDURES/DIRECTIVES BY CONDUCTING FLIGHT IN IMC WHEN HE LACKED TRAINING/QUALIFICATION FOR FLIGHT IN INSTRUMENT CONDITIONS.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA95FA060
- Event ID
- 20001207X02892
- Case number
- MIA95FA060
- 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: 29545b87d538dec97cb01dd02d1502cda29bf22ae4577003b29c11629787a347; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:53:09.588Z.