ATL98FA036 · Twin Commander Acft. Corp. 695A
Twin Commander Acft. Corp. 695A · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Boca Raton Airport (BCT) to Gwinnett County Briscoe Field (LZU)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL98FA036
- 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
- 3 · 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
Twin Commander Acft. Corp. 695A
- Aircraft type
- Twin Commander 695
- 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
- N269M
- Operator
- Michael D. Mintz · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Boca Raton Airport (BCT), Boca Raton, FLTo Gwinnett County Briscoe Field (LZU), Lawrenceville, 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
- En route · climb to 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
- 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 possible
- Pilot in command › Flight into known adverse weather, continued
- Weather condition › Rain
- Weather condition › Turbulence(thunderstorms)
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot had received a weather briefing and was aware of the weather conditions west and north of the airport. The pilot was issued the flight clearance as filed, and was assigned an initial altitude of 2000 feet. Approximately five minutes into the flight, the air traffic controller questioned the pilot concerning the assigned heading. The controller stated that the pilot 'sounded extremely strained' and replied, 'N269M is in trouble.' Radar altitude data showed a rapid loss of altitude for N269M; the last radar altitude data showed the flight at 2800 feet. The airplane collided with the ground in a nose low attitude. Weather radar data from the Miami Weather Surveillance Radar-1988, Doppler (WSR-88D) showed a large, intense convective cell just west of Boca Raton between 1530:15 and 1535:57. Moderate to very heavy rain showers were associated with the convective activity. A review of the radar data showed that N269M was 3.5 to 4.0 miles north of the core of the large convective cell.
Probable cause
The pilot flew into known convective meterological conditions and lost control of the airplane. Factors were low clouds, and moderate to heavy rain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL98FA036
- Event ID
- 20001211X09392
- Case number
- ATL98FA036
- 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: 9cb21ca2640dbaef5ea0c2aef770689e2772083bee61aa55faff11e2181b3a20; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:41:46.360Z.