IAD00LA021 · Wood SEAWIND 3000 SEAWIND 30
Wood SEAWIND 3000 SEAWIND 30 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water en route
From Douglas Municipal Gene Chambers Airport (DQH) to Oakland County International Airport (PTK)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD00LA021
- 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
Wood SEAWIND 3000 SEAWIND 30
- Aircraft type
- Wood SEAWIND 3000
- 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
- N94WB
- Operator
- Daniel J. Wood · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Douglas Municipal Gene Chambers Airport (DQH), Douglas, GATo Oakland County International Airport (PTK), Pontiac, MI
- 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 collision with terrain/water
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot departed Florida destined for Michigan, and made an en route stop in Georgia. About 2 1/2-hours after departing Georgia, witnesses observed the airplane flying in the vicinity of Cumberland Gap National Park, located in the southwestern tip of Virginia. The airplane was observed flying into a cloud layer headed toward the highest peak in the park. Shortly after, the sound of timber breaking and silence was heard. The weather was described as foggy and windy. Prior to departing Florida, the pilot obtained a weather briefing from the AFSS. The AFSS briefer reported that he could only get the pilot as far as Tennessee in VFR conditions before the weather became MVFR to IFR. During the en route stop in Georgia, the pilot received another weather briefing from a different AFSS. The AFSS briefer did not provide synopsis, terminal conditions expected, the AIRMET series for IFR conditions and mountain obscuration along the route, but did provide AIRMET Zulu for icing conditions over Michigan. Examination of the wreckage revealed there were no mechanical deficiencies with the airplane, engine, or related systems.
Probable cause
The pilot's continued flight from visual flight rules into instrument meteorological conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD00LA021
- Event ID
- 20001212X20498
- Case number
- IAD00LA021
- 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: 53cb9fac76ec641fd4c1de0429aab01a625d2e2c6db73327ed6fd599521756ca; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:27:29.951Z.