ATL84FA064 · Piper PA-24-260B
Piper PA-24-260B · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport (Lovell Field) (CHA) to 5A1 · Marion, VA
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL84FA064
- 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-24-260B
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-24
- 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
- N8981P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport (Lovell Field) (CHA), Chattanooga, TNTo 5A1 · Marion, VA
- 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
- 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
- Pilot in command › Proper altitude, not maintained
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PLT RECEIVED 2 WX BRIEFINGS BEFORE TAKEOFF & WAS PROVIDED FLT PRECAUTIONS OF IMC TO CONTINUE BEYOND 0900 EST. ALSO, HE WAS ADVISED THAT THE MOUNTAINS WOULD BE OCCASIONALLY OBSCURED & ICING COULD BE EXPECTED TO THE WEST BELOW 6000 FT. DURING BOTH BRIEFINGS, HE REPORTED HIS INTENTIONS TO FLY UNDER IFR; HOWEVER, HE DID NOT FILE A FLT PLAN. AFTER HIS LAST BRIEFING, HE SAID HE WOULD CALL BACK AFTER REVIEWING HIS CHARTS. BEFORE TAKING OFF, THE PLT ADVISED GROUND CONTROL HE PLANNED TO CRUISE 'JUST AROUND 1100, RIGHT UNDER THE DECK.' HE TOOK OFF AT APRX 0845. AT 0853, RADAR SERVICE WAS TERMINATED, 9 MI EAST OF THE ARPT & NO FURTHER CONTACT WAS MADE. SUBSEQUENTLY, THE ACFT CRASHED ABOUT 75 FT BELOW THE SUMMIT OF WHITE OAK MOUNTAIN, ABOUT 10 MI NE OF THE ARPT. AN EXAM REVEALED THE ACFT MAD IMPACTED IN AN APPARENT NOSE LEVEL, RIGHT WING LOW ATTITUDE. NO PREIMPACT, MECHANICAL PROBLEMS WERE EVIDENT. LOCAL RESIDENTS REPORTED LOW CLOUDS WHICH OBSCURED THE HILL TOPS.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL84FA064
- Event ID
- 20001214X45220
- Case number
- ATL84FA064
- 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 UTC date the NTSB stores; the local time zone is not recorded, so the local date may differ by a day.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 6db6b0cec229f2d775cceccb853fc23e34004a6cba8493dfbe683405eadf227b; retrieved 2026-09-21T05:44:34.318Z.