CHI01FA043 · Piper PA-28R-180
Piper PA-28R-180 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water on approach
From Maury County Airport (MRC) to Vermilion Regional Airport (DNV)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI01FA043
- 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
- 4 · 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-180
- 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
- N4541J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Maury County Airport (MRC), Mount Pleasant, TNTo Vermilion Regional Airport (DNV)
- 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
- Approach
- 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
- 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 › Altitude/clearance, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was destroyed when it impacted the ground about 6 miles from the airport while on an ILS approach. The pilot was instrument rated. No logbook entry was found to indicate that the holding procedures requirements listed in FAR 61.57 (c) were performed. In addition, the pilot had only logged 1.3 hours of simulated instrument flight time and 0.9 hours of actual instrument flight time in the previous 6 months. No preexisting anomalies were found with respect to the accident airplane. Reported weather at the time of the accident was 500 foot overcast with 5 miles of visibility. Radar data along with voice transcripts show that the aircraft was given a right turn to a 180-degree heading to intercept the ILS 21 approach. The data shows that the aircraft turned left prior to intercepting the localizer course, and then proceeded through the localizer course before commencing a right turn to intercept the 209-degree approach bearing. The data indicates that when the aircraft was about 9.6 nautical miles from the localizer antenna, it was about 0.7 miles left of the localizer course. The aircraft altitude returns from the radar data indicate that the aircraft remained below the 3-degree glide slope path during the approach. The last radar return shows that the aircraft was about 400-feet below the standard 3-degree glide slope. The aircraft wreckage was located about 0.3 nautical miles and 196 degrees from the ILS outer marker antenna
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain altitude/clearance during the instrument approach. Factors were the low ceilings, the pilot's failure to maintain proper alignment and glidepath during the approach, his lack of recent instrument experience, and his failure to perform the missed approach.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI01FA043
- Event ID
- 20001212X22264
- Case number
- CHI01FA043
- 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: 79c7c929802e561005a5f5a5932f7aae433c9f6504f1d26d121f799d4509b95a; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:45:09.346Z.