ATL96LA004 · Lopez Lancair 360
Lopez Lancair 360 · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From DeKalb Peachtree Airport (PDK) to Boca Raton Airport (BCT)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL96LA004
- 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
Lopez Lancair 360
- Aircraft type
- Lopez Lancair 360
- 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
- N102JL
- Operator
- Jean M. Maury · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From DeKalb Peachtree Airport (PDK)To Boca Raton Airport (BCT), Boca Raton, FL
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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 › VFR flight into imc, intentional
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The noninstrument-rated pilot filed for and received an instrument flight plan clearance from Atlanta to Boca Raton, Florida. The weather at the time of the accident was IMC. Transcripts of radio communications indicated that the pilot was having problems maintaining altitude and heading. Shortly after departure the pilot reported that he thought that one of the aircraft gyros was not operating properly. He later reported that he believed the problem had corrected itself. Witnesses observed the aircraft descend out of the base of the clouds and break up in flight.
Probable cause
the noninstrument-rated pilot's intentional VFR flight into instrument meteorological conditions which led to a loss of control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL96LA004
- Event ID
- 20001207X04633
- Case number
- ATL96LA004
- 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: 33b476ed48bcef9aea8d1a624a0bc27f74c5a3a6f78c78dbd7fba7cd00306026; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:33:40.904Z.