ATL99FA127 · Gulfstream American AA-5A
Gulfstream American AA-5A · Accident: in flight collision with object while maneuvering
From Hawkins Field (HKS) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL99FA127
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Gulfstream American AA-5A
- Aircraft type
- Gulfstream American AA-5
- 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
- N26801
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hawkins Field (HKS), HAWKINS, MSTo not recorded
- 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
- 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 collision with object
- 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
- Tree(s)
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The owner of the airplane, a pilot-rated passenger, and a second passenger flew up to the owner's farm to photograph timberland that had recently burned in a fire. Throughout most of the flight, the owner was the pilot and temporarily gave the flight controls to the right seat passenger. After taking several pictures with the pilot-rated passenger at the flight controls, he looked up and noticed that several trees were directly in front of the airplane's flight path. He resumed full control of the airplane, applied full power, and pulled back on the control yoke in an attempt to gain altitude. Unable to clear the tops of the trees, the airplane impacted several pine trees and came to rest along the base of the pine trees in an inverted position.
Probable cause
The pilot-in-command's failure to maintain altitude clearance while maneuvering. A factor was the pine trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL99FA127
- Event ID
- 20001212X19685
- Case number
- ATL99FA127
- 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: 21f38d0588b3a22abc8599f176883f5bfc5222cd8b4a97f51eb0fecbd3c953e4; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:48:56.299Z.