MIA90FA014 · Piper PA-28R-200
Delta Plus Piper PA-28R-200 · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Morristown Regional Airport (MOR) to HDI · Cleveland, TN
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA90FA014
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-28R-200
- 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
- N5005S
- Operator
- Delta Plus
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Morristown Regional Airport (MOR), Morristown, TNTo HDI · Cleveland, TN
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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 › Spatial disorientation
- Pilot in command › Spiral, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
DRG AN IFR FLT AT 8000' MSL IN IMC CONDS, THE PLT WAS CLEARED BY ATC TO DSCND & MAINT 4000'. HE ACKNOWLEGED. APRX 2 MIN LATER, HE WAS ADZD THAT RADAR SVC WAS TERMINATED & WAS TOLD TO CONTACT APCH CONTROL ON ANOTHER FREQ. THE PLT'S ACKNOWLEDGEMENT WAS UNINTELLIGIBLE. SUBSEQUENTLY, CONTACT WITH THE ACFT WAS LOST & IT CRASHED IN A STEEP DSCNT. BEFORE THE ACDNT, A WITNESS HEARD THE ACFT CIRCLING OVERHEAD. INITIALLY, HE WAS UNABLE TO SEE THE ACFT DUE TO CLOUDS, THEN HE SAW THE ACFT COME OUT OF THE CLOUDS IN A STEEP DIVE. HE SAID THE NOSE OF THE ACFT APPEARED TO PULL UP JUST BEFORE IMPACT. RADAR DATA SHOWED THAT THE ACFT WAS IN A SPIRALING DSCNT BEFORE IT CRASHED. THE PLT HAD JUST RCVD AN INSTRUMENT RATING ON 9/20/89. THIS WAS HIS 1ST KNOWN FLT IN ACTUAL INSTRUMENT CONDS SINCE HE HAD RCVD HIS NEW RATING. NO PREIMPACT PART FAILURE OR MALFUNCTION OF THE ACFT WAS FOUND, ALTHOUGH IT WAS BADLY DAMAGED BY IMPACT.
Probable cause
LOSS OF CONTROL OF THE AIRPLANE IN INSTRUMENT FLIGHT CONDITIONS DUE TO SPATIAL DISORIENTATION, WHICH RESULTED IN AN INADVERTENT DESCENDING SPIRAL. LACK OF TOTAL EXPERIENCE IN THE TYPE OF OPERATION (ACTUAL INSTRUMENT CONDITIONS) WAS CONSIDERED TO BE A CONTRIBUTING FACTOR.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA90FA014
- Event ID
- 20001213X29645
- Case number
- MIA90FA014
- 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: 67bc9916ee546769335cf3738a108056342ff6977b091575e2b1bf0c912bc525; retrieved 2026-09-21T03:06:44.565Z.