ATL83FA140 · Piper PA-28-140
Piper PA-28-140 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water en route
From Tuscaloosa National Airport (TCL) to 312 · Point Pleasant, WV
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL83FA140
- 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
Piper PA-28-140
- 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
- N9600W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tuscaloosa National Airport (TCL), TULSCALOOSA, ALTo 312 · Point Pleasant, WV
- 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 collision with terrain/water
- 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
- Flight/nav instruments, directional gyro › Inoperative
- Pilot in command › Flight into known adverse weather, performed
- Pilot in command › Operation with known deficiencies in equipment, not corrected
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE AIRCRAFT CRASHED INTO HINCH MT AT THE 2700 FOOT LEVEL DURING CRUISE FLT IN IMC WEATHER. THE PILOT WAS INFORMED DURING THE INITIAL AND SUBSEQUENT BRIEFINGS THAT VFR FLT WAS NOT RECOMMENDED FOR HIS ROUTE. THE FIRST LEG OF THE FLIGHT FROM NEW ORLEANS TO TUSCALOOSA ENDED WITH A LANDING UNDER IFR CONDITIONS. THE PILOT TOLD THE FSS PERSONNEL HE WAS GOING BACK TO MERIDIAN, MS BUT INSTEAD CONTINUED ON TOWARD HIS ORIGINAL DESTINATION OF MASON WV. THE PILOT RECEIVED FATAL INJURIES FROM THE CRASH IN TN BUT HIS SON, A PASSENGER, SURVIVED. THE SON SAID THAT HIS FATHER WAS INSTRUMENT RATED BUT HAD NOT FILED AN IFR FLIGHT PLAN BECAUSE OF A KNOWN MALFUNCTIONING DIRECTIONAL GYRO. A STOP HAD BEEN MADE ON A PREVIOUS TRIP TO FIX THE DG BUT THE PROBLEM WAS NOT RESOLVED; FIRE DAMAGE PRECLUDED POSTACCIDENT DETERMINATION OF CAUSE OF THE MALFUNCTION.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL83FA140
- Event ID
- 20001214X42331
- Case number
- ATL83FA140
- 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: d7f2e8982ab13b6148d86b160d746c70837f483d72b8dadea5ae830aa7086feb; retrieved 2026-09-21T07:02:25.240Z.