FTW98FA031 · Piper PA-28RT-201 PA-28RT-20
Piper PA-28RT-201 PA-28RT-20 · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From 1M1 · Little Rock, AR to City of Murfreesboro Airport (MBT)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98FA031
- 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
Piper PA-28RT-201 PA-28RT-20
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N8146R
- Operator
- Charles Dine
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 1M1 · Little Rock, ARTo City of Murfreesboro Airport (MBT), Murfreesboro, TN
- 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
- 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
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While on a dark night cross country flight, the airplane impacted trees and terrain following a loss of aircraft control by the non instrument rated private pilot. Sky conditions along the flight route were 2,700 feet broken variable to 3,100 overcast ceilings and the controller last observed the aircraft transponder code at an altitude of 2,100 feet msl. The pilot's total flight time was 132.0 hours of which 7.7 hours were at night. The pilot had received 3.5 hours of dual flight instruction, and a complex aircraft endorsement in the accident aircraft. Flight control continuity was confirmed. No anomalies that would preclude engine operation were noted.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control. Factors were the pilot's lack of total experience in the make and model of aircraft, the pilot's lack of total night flight experience, and the dark night conditions,
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98FA031
- Event ID
- 20001208X08997
- Case number
- FTW98FA031
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1997-10-25.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 4e806bdf53463936afed286aa28af4d3c29fa58e10c9da09f56ec9c5851cc023; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:46:50.431Z.