ATL91FA008 · Beech A36
Air and Sea Sales Beech A36 · Accident en route
From Greenville Downtown Airport (GMU) to Georgetown County Airport (GGE)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL91FA008
- 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
- Unknown
Beech A36
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 36
- 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
- N97PA
- Operator
- Air and Sea Sales
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Greenville Downtown Airport (GMU), Greenville, SCTo Georgetown County Airport (GGE), Georgetown, SC
- 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 · descent
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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 › Incapacitation(loss of consciousness)
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
DURING DESCENT ON AN IFR FLIGHT, THE PILOT BECAME INCAPACTIATED. THE NON-RATED PASSENGER THEN MADE THE FOLLOWING TRANSMISSION: 'CAN ANYBODY HEAR ME?', FOLLOWED BY '... HE WENT TO SLEEP ON ME'. RADAR DATA INDICATES THAT N97PA THEN FLEW ERRATIC HEADINGS AND ALTITUDES UNTIL FINALLY TURNING TO A SOUTHEASTERLY HEADING, TOWARDS THE OCEAN. ATTEMPTS BY ATC TO DIRECT A TURN BACK TOWARDS LAND WERE TO NO AVAIL. RADAR CONTACT WAS LOST 4 MILES FROM THE COASTLINE OVER THE ATLANTIC OCEAN. THE COAST GUARD RECOVERED AN AIRPLANE SEAT AND TWO SECTIONS OF LANDING GEAR. POSITIVE IDENTIFICATION OF THE PILOT AND PASSENGER WAS NOT POSSIBLE. THE PILOT HAD RECEIVED HIS CLASS II MEDICAL THE DAY OF THE ACCIDENT. A SEARCH OF HIS MEDICAL RECORD REVEALED A SLIGHTLY ABNORMAL ECG IN 1988 (ON APPLICATION FOR CLASS I MEDICAL). ALL SUBSEQUENT APPLICATIONS FOR FAA MEDICAL CERTIFICATES WERE FOR CLASS II CERTIFICATES, WHICH DO NOT REQUIRE ECG TESTING.
Probable cause
THE PILOT-IN-COMMAND'S LOSS OF CONSCIOUSNESS DURING FLIGHT. THE REASON FOR THE LOSS OF CONSCIOUSNESS COULD NOT BE DETERMINED.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL91FA008
- Event ID
- 20001212X24402
- Case number
- ATL91FA008
- 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: 65acbf062480edb9f59694c8cc22f12ca9616e093e36b23e1521a3e77cdad129; retrieved 2026-09-21T02:06:21.631Z.