ATL89FA174 · Piper PA-30
Piper PA-30 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Veterans Airport of Southern Illinois (MWA) to L24 · Lawrenceville, GA
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL89FA174
- 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-30
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-30
- 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
- N7554Y
- Operator
- John L. Hart · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Veterans Airport of Southern Illinois (MWA), Marion, ILTo L24 · Lawrenceville, GA
- 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
- 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, uncontrolled
- Pilot in command › Flight into known adverse weather, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
PLT RECEIVED A FULL WEATHER BRIEFING FOR AN IFR FLT AT 7,000 FEET WHICH INCLUDED FORECASTED THUNDERSTORMS ALONG ROUTE OF FLT. A CONVECTIVE SIGMET WAS ALSO IN EFFECT FOR ROUTE OF FLIGHT. IN THE AREA OF SPRINGFIELD, TN, THE FLT WAS OBSERVED ON RADAR TO BE APPROACHING AN AREA OF PRECIPITATION, AND THE PLT STATED IT WAS GETTING 'A LITTLE ROUGH'. DEVIATION AROUND THE WEATHER AND AN ALTITUDE CHANGE, IF NECESSARY, WAS APPROVED BY THE CONTROLLER. A FEW MINUTES LATER THE FLT WAS ADVISED IT WAS IN THE MIDDLE OF A WEATHER AREA AND THAT ADDITIONAL WEATHER AREAS WERE AHEAD. THE FLT WAS LOST FROM RADAR SHORTLY AFTER THIS. WITNESSES REPORTED SEEING THE ACFT COME OUT OF AREA OF LIGHTNING AND THUNDER IN A 70 DEGREE NOSE LOW ATTITUDE.
Probable cause
THE PILOT'S DECISION TO CONTINUE FLIGHT INTO AN AREA OF KNOWN ADVERSE WEATHER WHICH RESULTED IN HIS ABILITY TO MAINTAIN CONTROL OF THE AIRPLANE. CONTRIBUTING FACTOR(S) WAS: THE ADVERSE WEATHER CONDITIONS.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL89FA174
- Event ID
- 20001213X28715
- Case number
- ATL89FA174
- 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: 0e29258f9674aab34a85c10677c893e4ab2c978fd9b4fed67a2c11aedc76e109; retrieved 2026-09-21T03:15:09.812Z.