ATL98FA007 · Champion 7ECA
Champion 7ECA · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Thomson-McDuffie County Airport (HQU) to Pensacola International Airport (PNS)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL98FA007
- 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
Champion 7ECA
- Aircraft type
- Champion 7
- 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
- N9556S
- Operator
- William B. Chapman · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Thomson-McDuffie County Airport (HQU), Thomson, GATo Pensacola International Airport (PNS), Pensacola, FL
- 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 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)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Altitude/clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
When the pilot failed to arrive for his brother's college graduation, concerned family members reported that he and his airplane were missing. A search was initiated, and the Civil Air Patrol located the airplane on top of Pine Mountain. According to the pilot's personal flight log, his intended destination was Pensacola, FL, with intermediate stops for fuel at Thomson, GA, and Greenville, AL. Airport personal at Thomson confirmed that the airplane landed about 1630 on 11/6/97. They reported that the pilot purchased 26.5 gallons of 100LL fuel and departed about 1700. Witnesses at the Thomson Airport stated that when he took off, the weather was marginal VFR and deteriorating rapidly. Witnesses near Pine Mountain stated that the visibility at the time of the accident was about 1/4 mile in haze/fog. About 15 miles south of the accident site at Columbus, GA, the weather was, in part: 400 feet broken, 1200 feet overcast, visibility 4 miles with haze. Elevation at Columbus was 394 feet; elevation of the accident site was 1190 feet with 100 to 150 foot trees covering the mountain. The airplane impacted trees about 50 feet above the ground. Estimated time of the accident was 1845 (at about the time darkness was falling).
Probable cause
VFR flight by the pilot into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC), and his failure to maintain sufficient altitude or clearance from mountainous terrain. Related factors were: darkness, adverse weather conditions, and the pilot's self induced pressure to attend his brother's graduation the following day.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL98FA007
- Event ID
- 20001208X09128
- Case number
- ATL98FA007
- 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: 4b3bc2aaa4db7624811a736fff5891669b05e46d1d58cb0b1c963766e4a2f754; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:45:53.339Z.