MIA00FA048 · Cessna U-3A
Cessna U-3A · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Morristown Regional Airport (MOR) to Natchez–Adams County Airport / Hardy-Anders Field (HEZ)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA00FA048
- 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
Cessna U-3A
- Aircraft type
- Cessna U-3
- 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
- N8063X
- Operator
- Bland Greeson
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Morristown Regional Airport (MOR), Morristown, TNTo Natchez–Adams County Airport / Hardy-Anders Field (HEZ), Natchez, MS
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight departed with full fuel tanks; witnesses along the route of flight reported hearing sputtering sounds that lasted for approximately 5 seconds, followed by the throttles being reduced and the airplane decelerating. The airplane was observed to enter a right spin and according to a pilot-rated witness, the airplane was in a right spin when he first observed the airplane; the engines were at 'full throttle.' The airplane stopped spinning after 2 spins then appeared to begin to recover from the nose low attitude. A witness immediately adjacent to the crash site reported seeing a 2 foot by 4 foot object separate from the airplane during the nose low descent. He also reported the engines sounded like they were at full throttle and the airplane appeared to pitch up just before the impact. Examination of the airframe, flight controls, engines and engine accessories, and propellers revealed no evidence of preimpact failure or malfunction. Maintenance records were not recovered. A piece of acrylic and a white plastic item were located approximately 175 yards north of the impact sight; the acrylic was not the same thickness of the windshield or cabin door window. The cabin and cargo door were impact damaged.
Probable cause
The in-flight loss of control for undetermined reasons resulting in the collision with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA00FA048
- Event ID
- 20001212X20277
- Case number
- MIA00FA048
- 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: 1119b17960f9fb0f1718f3a9e33142c5b5fadbcd9d23c241c7a78490ac0bcd77; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:35:28.764Z.