MIA97FA043 · Forney F-1
Forney F-1 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather
From Spencer's Airpark (FL13) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA97FA043
- 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
Forney F-1
- Aircraft type
- Forney F-1
- 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
- N7530C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Spencer's Airpark (FL13)To not recorded
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
- 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); Tree(s)
- 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, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Spatial disorientation
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The noninstrument-rated pilot departed in dark night conditions on a local VFR flight at about 0530 EST, when instrument meteorological conditions prevailed due to fog. The flight did not return and Air Force satellites began receiving an emergency locator transmitter signal from the crash site sometime after 0600. The wreckage was located 1 mile southwest of the departure airport. The aircraft had crashed in a wooded area. The wreckage was scattered over 100 feet on a 320 degree heading. During examination of the crash site, all components of the aircraft were located on or around the main wreckage and there was no evidence of preimpact failure or malfunction of the aircraft structure, flight controls, or engine. The engine tachometer showed the aircraft had flown about 38 minutes since departure. No record of the pilot having received a weather briefing was located after the accident.
Probable cause
VFR flight by the noninstrument-rated pilot into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC), which resulted in spatial disorientation and an uncontrolled descent into a wooded area. Factors relating to the accident were: failure of the pilot to obtain a preflight weather briefing, darkness, the adverse weather condition (fog and/or low ceiling), and the pilot's lack of instrument experience.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA97FA043
- Event ID
- 20001208X07204
- Case number
- MIA97FA043
- 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: 7ce7c12027184826ff1ab0d1dab5161dea6f066c5478bb631942255656fb66f8; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:04:52.038Z.