FTW01LA032 · Smith TEAM TANGO 2 TEAM TANGO
Smith TEAM TANGO 2 TEAM TANGO · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Georgetown Executive Airport at Johnny Gantt Field (GTU) to Gainesville Regional Airport (GNV)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW01LA032
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Smith TEAM TANGO 2 TEAM TANGO
- Aircraft type
- Smith TEAM TANGO 2
- 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
- N6204D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Georgetown Executive Airport at Johnny Gantt Field (GTU), GEORGTOWN, TXTo Gainesville Regional Airport (GNV), Gainesville, FL
- 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)
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Spatial disorientation
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, performed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The non-instrument rated private pilot obtained a weather briefing for a planned cross-country flight at 9,500 feet in his amateur-built airplane. The weather briefing was inadequate because it was void of a route synopsis, radar or satellite data, and it contained limited current weather conditions and area forecasts for the route of flight. However, the weather briefing did include information concerning AIRMETS for instrument flight and icing conditions. A weather study revealed that instrument meteorological conditions and marginal visual meteorological conditions existed in the accident area around the time of the accident. Icing conditions also existed between 8,000 and 12,000 feet. The airplane was located along a creek bank in a heavily wooded area. It was noted that none of the trees surrounding the accident area appeared to have any impact damage.
Probable cause
the pilot's VFR flight into IMC while in cruise, which resulted in his loss of control of the airplane due to spatial disorientation. Contributing factors were the clouds, and icing weather conditions, and the inadequate weather briefing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW01LA032
- Event ID
- 20001212X22346
- Case number
- FTW01LA032
- 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: c76d1af1ea2cafdf9f448c9608c57c9c9cb4b3e99044db5c46ac57d219d1ee0a; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:44:07.855Z.