ATL96FA066 · Cessna 310R
Cessna 310R · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Athens Ben Epps Airport (AHN) to Indianapolis International Airport (IND)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL96FA066
- 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
Cessna 310R
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 310
- 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
- N447T
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Athens Ben Epps Airport (AHN), Athens, GATo Indianapolis International Airport (IND), Indianapolis, IN
- 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
- 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 › Design stress limits of aircraft, exceeded
- Pilot in command › Flight into adverse weather, initiated
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot received a weather briefing before his last departure, and was advised that visual flight was not advised. During the briefing, the pilot stated that he was aware of the weather conditions since he had observed thunderstorm activity during his approach into the departure airport. After the briefing the pilot departed to his destination airport. A few minutes into the flight, two witnesses on the ground heard the sound of the airplane breaking-up inflight. They also observed debris from the airplane falling from the base of the cloud layer. They also stated the thunderstorm activity was present at the time of their observations. Wreckage debris was scattered over an area about 4700 feet long and 1400 feet wide. All major airframe components were recovered from the accident site. Examination of the wreckage failed to disclose a mechanical problem or a system malfunction.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain visual flight conditions which resulted in the loss of control and subsequent inflight breakup of the airplane when he exceeded the design stress limits of the airframe.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL96FA066
- Event ID
- 20001208X05351
- Case number
- ATL96FA066
- 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: fa770e6ebfa86fec8ece92a576422fbf73d3652d4d83f1b38d70ad4e6e0d70d5; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:24:35.384Z.