ATL96FA096 · Cessna 152
Cessna 152 · Accident: in flight collision with object en route
From Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport (Lovell Field) (CHA) to Montgomery Regional (Dannelly Field) Airport (MGM)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL96FA096
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Cessna 152
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 152
- 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
- N95396
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport (Lovell Field) (CHA), Chattanooga, TNTo Montgomery Regional (Dannelly Field) Airport (MGM), Montgomery, AL
- 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 collision with object
- 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
- Antenna
- 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
- Object › Antenna
- Pilot in command › Clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Visual lookout, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During flight, the airplane collided with an 18 foot section of an antenna that was installed on top of a U.S. Forest Service fire watch tower. The airplane then crashed about 300 feet north of the tower, and wreckage was found scattered over an area approximately 75 feet long and 45 feet wide. The airplane wreckage and engine compartment were further damaged by ground fire. Debris from the watch tower antenna was located in the main wreckage, and some antenna debris was also found several feet north of the main wreckage. No preimpact mechanical problem was found.
Probable cause
failure of the pilot to see-and-avoid an antenna that was mounted on a Forest Service watch tower. The pilot's excessively low altitude flight was a related factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL96FA096
- Event ID
- 20001208X05903
- Case number
- ATL96FA096
- 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: 1543967fbe16dbee0e79b2dde8222b19e594679b2f2dd80f2357524454bf4be9; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:18:24.790Z.