MIA96LA175 · Piper PA-60-601P
Piper PA-60-601P · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water
From Emanuel County Airport (SBO) to 49J · HILTON HEAD IS, SC
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA96LA175
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-60-601P
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-60
- 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
- N956AF
- Operator
- Roger Dunbar
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Emanuel County Airport (SBO), Swainsboro, GATo 49J · HILTON HEAD IS, SC
- 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
- Other
- 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 collision with terrain/water
- 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, uncontrolled
- Pilot in command › Incapacitation(loss of consciousness)
Not plotted · Location withheld: coordinates are missing, conflicting, invalid, or have no accepted acquisition method. No substitute location has been invented.
NTSB narrative
The pilot had departed Swainsboro, Georgia at 1930 EST on an IFR flight. About 12 minutes later, he informed Jacksonville Center that he was very dizzy and could not see. There were no other recorded transmissions from the pilot. The airplane was tracked on radar until radar contact was lost at 2130. The airplane was at a heading of 110 degrees and an altitude of 9,000 feet the entire time. Attempts to locate the airplane by aerial intercept were uneventful. All shipping vessels along the airplane's expected course, were notified of the airplane's estimated fuel exhaustion point. No contact was reported and the search was suspended. Prior to departing Swainsboro, the pilot had mentioned to his wife that he had a headache. A review of the pilot's medical records revealed that he had twice indicated on his application for a medical certificate that he had a medical history of unconsciousness. In addition, he was being treated for hypertension with Norvasc and chlorthalidone prescription drugs.
Probable cause
pilot incapacitation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA96LA175
- Event ID
- 20001208X05304
- Case number
- MIA96LA175
- 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: 5d42b324dd67a37d47f5904d3ddd96526c5ef3985a52405fb058f5ca005aa510; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:25:51.194Z.