FTW92FA180 · Piper PA-28R-201T PA-28R-201
Mag Well Piper PA-28R-201T PA-28R-201 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather while maneuvering
From Acadiana Regional Airport (ARA) to Dallas Love Field (DAL)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW92FA180
- 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
Piper PA-28R-201T PA-28R-201
- 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
- N6959C
- Operator
- Mag Well
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Acadiana Regional Airport (ARA), New Iberia, LATo Dallas Love Field (DAL), Dallas, TX
- 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
- Maneuvering · turn to reverse direction
- 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 › Design stress limits of aircraft, exceeded
- Pilot in command › Hazardous weather advisory, disregarded
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
DURING AN INSTRUMENT FLIGHT THE PILOT ATTEMPTED TO PENETRATE A LINE OF THUNDERSTORMS WITH TOPS OF 45,000 FEET. THE PILOT REPORTED, DURING HIS LAST COMMUNICATIONS, THAT HE WAS ENCOUNTERING SEVERE TURBULENCE. THE AIRPLANE PIECES WERE SEEN TO FALL TO THE GROUND, SCATTERED OVER AN AREA OF 10 SQUARE MILES. SURFACE WINDS WERE ESTIMATED AT 40 MILES PER HOUR GUSTING TO 60 MILES PER HOUR WITH HEAVY RAIN. PRE FLIGHT WEATHER BRIEFING IDENTIFIED THE HAZARDOUS WEATHER AND THE PILOT WAS ADVISED BY THE BRIEFER TO REMAIN ON THE GROUND UNTIL IT PASSED.
Probable cause
THE PILOT EXCEEDED THE DESIGN STRESS LIMITS OF THE AIRFRAME AS A RESULT OF FLIGHT INTO KNOWN ADVERSE WEATHER CONDITIONS.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW92FA180
- Event ID
- 20001211X15147
- Case number
- FTW92FA180
- 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: 25abe0b72161eb8c2f16a7c0047436b603570d71b05a9be60f8f86df986b43d0; retrieved 2026-09-21T01:02:26.596Z.