ATL95FA088 · Cessna 172N
Cessna 172N · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Fulton County Airport Brown Field (FTY) to Raleigh-Durham International Airport (RDU)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL95FA088
- 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
Cessna 172N
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- 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
- N3220E
- Operator
- Little, Daniel A. · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fulton County Airport Brown Field (FTY), GATo Raleigh-Durham International Airport (RDU), Raleigh, NC
- 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); Tower
- 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 › Altitude/clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Impairment(drugs)
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, performed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE NONINSTRUMENT-RATED PRIVATE PILOT RECEIVED A WEATHER BRIEFING BEFORE DEPARTING. DURING THE BRIEFING, HE WAS ADVISED OF APPROACHING RAIN AND THUNDERSTORM ACTIVITY. WHILE TAXIING FOR TAKEOFF, TOWER PERSONNEL ASKED HIM IF HE WAS AWARE OF A SIGMET THAT WAS IN EFFECT FOR THE ATLANTA AREA; THE PILOT REPLIED THAT HE WAS. AFTER TAKEOFF, HE DEPARTED NORTHEAST BOUND ON A VFR FLIGHT TO RALEIGH, NC. WITNESSES AT AN ELECTRICAL PLANT HEARD A SMALL AIRCRAFT FLYING IN THE AREA BEFORE THEY HEARD THE AIRCRAFT HIT THE PLANT'S CONCRETE SMOKE STACK. THEY THEN OBSERVED THE AIRCRAFT DESCENDING OUT OF THE BASE OF THE CLOUDS. THE LEFT WING WAS FOLDED BACK AGAINST THE FUSELAGE, AND THE AIRCRAFT WAS SPINNING AS IT CRASHED INTO THE GROUND. THE SMOKE STACK WAS ABOUT 880' TALL, AND ITS TOP WAS OBSCURED BY CLOUDS. IMPACT MARKS WERE FOUND ABOUT 75' FROM THE TOP OF THE SMOKE STACK. A TOXICOLOGY TEST OF THE PILOT'S BLOOD REVEALED 0.005 MCG/ML OF TETRAHYDROCANNABINOL AND 0.011 MCG/ML OF TETRAHYDROCANNABINOL CARBOXYLIC ACID (METABOLITES OF MARIJUANA).
Probable cause
THE PILOT'S IMPAIRMENT OF JUDGMENT AND PERFORMANCE DUE TO A DRUG, VFR FLIGHT INTO INSTRUMENT METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS, AND FAILURE TO REMAIN CLEAR OF THE OBSTACLE (TOWERING SMOKE STACK). FACTORS RELATING TO THE ACCIDENT WERE: THE ADVERSE WEATHER CONDITIONS.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL95FA088
- Event ID
- 20001207X03216
- Case number
- ATL95FA088
- 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: 8b68e7f4949c65d667a3a4f874d8e988a14742edb05dc3bbe9bbb715b0850ba0; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:48:26.397Z.