ATL93LA133 · Cessna 150E
Cessna 150E · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Perry, SC (no airport) to Fairview, SC (no airport)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL93LA133
- 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
- 0 · 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
Cessna 150E
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 150
- 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
- N6197T
- Operator
- Gunter, Roy S. · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Perry, SC (no airport)To Fairview, SC (no airport)
- 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
- 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 › Weather evaluation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE COMMERCIAL PILOT ELECTED TO TAKE OFF AFTER A ONE HOUR DELAY FOR FOGGY CONDITIONS. HE DID NOT OBTAIN A WEATHER BRIEFING. HE CHECKED A NEARBY ATIS AFTER BECOMING AIRBORNE, AND THEY WERE REPORTING IFR CONDITIONS. HE REACHED HIS DESTINATION AIRPORT, AND OBSERVED THAT IT WAS 'PARTIALLY FOGGED IN.' HE ELECTED TO CIRCLE THE AIRFIELD UNTIL CONDITIONS IMPROVED. THE WEATHER BEGAN TO DETERIORATE FURTHER, AND THE PILOT ENTERED IMC. HE THEN ELECTED TO DESCEND AND LOOK FOR AN OPEN FIELD SINCE HIS FUEL STATUS WAS LOW. HE BROKE OUT OF THE WEATHER, AND MADE A PRECAUTIONARY LANDING IN A COTTON FIELD AFTER TWO ATTEMPTS. THE NOSE GEAR FAILED AFTER LANDING ON THE ROUGH TERRAIN, AND THE AIRCRAFT WAS STRUCTURALLY DAMAGED
Probable cause
THE PILOT'S IMPROPER WEATHER EVALUATION PRIOR TO COMMENCING THE FLIGHT. FACTORS WERE THE FOG AND LOW CEILING WEATHER CONDITIONS, AND THE ROUGH, UNEVEN TERRAIN AT THE LANDING SITE
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL93LA133
- Event ID
- 20001211X12775
- Case number
- ATL93LA133
- 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: a1418eef7d2322571a0726f3c2ecb4400845cccd4772ec62176c976bef1e670e; retrieved 2026-09-21T22:52:00.924Z.