ATL00FA019 · Bellanca BL-17-30A
Bellanca BL-17-30A · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Asheville Regional Airport (AVL) to JACKSON, IN
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL00FA019
- 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
Bellanca BL-17-30A
- Aircraft type
- Bellanca BL-17
- 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
- N8821V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Possible conflict
- From Asheville Regional Airport (AVL), Asheville, NCTo JACKSON, IN
- 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); 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, continued
- Weather condition › Low ceiling
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Circumstances of the history of flight are not known. The intended route of flight was not determined, a review of the Federal Aviation Administration Flight service system failed to disclose that the pilot had received a pre-flight weather briefing for the intended flight. The flight was first heard only seconds before the airplane collided with trees. Subsequent to the collision, smoke was sighted in the vicinity of the accident site. Upon arriving at the accident site, rescue personnel noticed that fog and low clouds were about 20 feet above the ground, and the mountain top was obscured. Examination of the engine and airframe failed to disclose a mechanical malfunction or the failure of related component assemblies.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to adequately evaluate weather conditions that resulted in the continuation of visual flight into instrument weather conditions and the subsequent collision with trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL00FA019
- Event ID
- 20001212X20327
- Case number
- ATL00FA019
- 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: e2689631f1fff19d35f5a36f4a58afdea5201e5a2709e5ba20f4feaeb4474f2a; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:32:49.050Z.