MIA97FA021 · Cessna TU206B
Cessna TU206B · Accident: in flight encounter with weather while maneuvering
From McKellar-Sipes Regional Airport (MKL) to 19A · Jefferson, GA
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA97FA021
- 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
- Unknown
Cessna TU206B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 206
- 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
- N4970F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From McKellar-Sipes Regional Airport (MKL), Jackson, TNTo 19A · Jefferson, GA
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- 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 › Altitude/clearance, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Flight into adverse weather, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot called an Automated Flight Service Station by telephone, & requested & received weather for his route of flight & destination airport. The specialist advised the pilot of occasional moderate turbulence, occasional moderate rime & mixed icing; in addition, the pilot was advised of a line of thunderstorms along his intended route of flight. A witness traveling in her automobile saw the airplane before the accident. She said she heard a low flying plane & saw it '...coming towards our vehicle in a descending motion. She said the plane then made a left turn toward mountains on the other side of the road. Also, she said the weather was '...cloudy, big fluffy clouds dark, for a storm was coming in but was not raining at the time. We later ran into a real bad storm....' A witnesses located about 2 miles east of the crash site said that he observed 'overcast conditions' at his residence about 1800 with 'snow, small flakes, and cold temperature.' He further stated there were 'snow showers off and on for several hours that evening.' The airplane impacted in a heavily wooded area, in rising terrain, that sloped up about 19 degrees. It was found by search personnel on 11/12/97. No discrepancies were found with either the airframe or the engine.
Probable cause
continued flight by the pilot into adverse weather conditions, and his failure to maintain sufficient altitude or clearance from rising/mountainous terrain. The adverse weather and terrain conditions were related factors.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA97FA021
- Event ID
- 20001208X07089
- Case number
- MIA97FA021
- 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: 79cd46ec78aeabbf07447c071dc90e9364e14e3e3f8d28500af647fbcc74ecd1; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:08:03.631Z.