ATL94FA006 · Mooney M20B
Mooney M20B · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From I14 · Indianapolis, IN to Richard B Russell Airport (RMG)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL94FA006
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Mooney M20B
- Aircraft type
- Mooney M20
- 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
- N74724
- Operator
- Quearry, Carlos G. · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From I14 · Indianapolis, INTo Richard B Russell Airport (RMG), Rome, 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 · 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, performed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PRIVATE, NON-INSTRUMENT RATED PILOT WAS ON A CROSS COUNTRY FLIGHT. IT WAS REPORTED THAT LOW CEILINGS AND FOG COVERED THE CRASH SITE AT THE TIME OF THE ACCIDENT. BASED ON WITNESS REPORTS, THE AIRCRAFT FLEW OVERHEAD AT LOW ALTITUDE, THEN RETURNED A SHORT TIME LATER. THE ENGINE SOUND WAS INDICATIVE OF HIGH RPM, FOLLOWED IMMEDIATELY BY THE SOUND OF A CRASH. THE WRECKAGE WAS FOUND IN A PASTURE WHICH WAS BORDERED BY TREES. IMPACT DAMAGE WAS INDICATIVE OF A STEEP (APPROXIMATELY 56 DEGREES), NOSE LOW COLLISION WITH TREES AND TERRAIN. NO EVIDENCE OF A MECHANICAL MALFUNCTION OR FAILURE WAS FOUND DURING THE WRECKAGE EXAMINATION. A SEARCH OF FLIGHT SERVICE STATION RECORDS REVEALED THAT THE PILOT DID NOT RECEIVE A WEATHER BRIEFING PRIOR TO THE FLIGHT, AND NO FLIGHT PLAN WAS FILED.
Probable cause
THE PILOT'S VFR FLIGHT INTO IMC, AND HIS FAILURE TO MAINTAIN AIRCRAFT CONTROL. FACTORS WERE THE PILOT'S FAILURE TO USE A PREFLIGHT BRIEFING SERVICE, AND THE LOW CEILINGS AND FOG AT THE ACCIDENT SITE.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL94FA006
- Event ID
- 20001211X13513
- Case number
- ATL94FA006
- 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: af171be9e8aea4e55e2d1b2dee7807b00ea36834dc268434ebb720d6a43dee37; retrieved 2026-09-21T00:20:47.983Z.