ATL88FA138 · Piper PA-28-180
Piper PA-28-180 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water en route
From Springfield Robertson County Airport (M91) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL88FA138
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-28-180
- 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
- N32911
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Springfield Robertson County Airport (M91), Springfield, TNTo not recorded
- 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
- 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 › Descent, not corrected
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
PILOT CALLED FSS ON WRONG FREQ. ANOTHER PILOT ANSWERED & PILOT REQ FSS FREQ. HE THEN CALLED FSS, RPTED ENG QUIT. WITNESS HEARD 'ENG STARTING' MOMENTARILY OVERHEAD, WATCHED ACFT PITCH OVER, DIVE TO GND & IMPACT WITH NO ATTEMPT TO FLARE FOR LNDING. PITCH TRIM WAS FULLY NOSE DOWN, THERE WAS EVIDENCE OF PROPELLER ROTATION UNDER POWER AT IMPACT, & NO REASON FOUND TO PREVENT ENG RUNNING. PIC BACKGROUND CHECK SHOWED TREATMENT FOR DEPRESSION, CONTINUOUS USE OF VALIUM TO SLEEP SINCE 1979, NERVOUS BREAKDOWN OF FATHER, FEAR OF NERVOUS BREAKDOWN HIMSELF, SEVERE SHORTAGES IN GOVT GRAIN IN HIS WAREHOUSE, & 1 MILLION DOLLAR INSURANCE TO WAREHOUSE. WHEN GOVT AUDITOR ARRIVED UNEXPECTEDLY, PIC LEFT WAREHOUSE, RENTED ACFT, TOOK OFF HURRIEDLY, & SUBSEQUENTLY CRASHED. WITNESSES REPORTED PILOT DID NOT PREFLT, DID NOT ACCOMPLISH A RUN-UP, AND TAXIIED AT HIGH SPEED.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL88FA138
- Event ID
- 20001213X25377
- Case number
- ATL88FA138
- 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: 6c787e43489d020b8e60158b4ce559b7102e8396dca1497d871d25cc76903487; retrieved 2026-09-21T03:45:47.316Z.