CHI01LA048 · Socata TBM 700
Socata TBM 700 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water on approach
From Barrow County Airport (WDR) to Harrisburg-Raleigh Airport (HSB)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI01LA048
- 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
- 0 · 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
Socata TBM 700
- Aircraft type
- Socata TBM-700
- 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
- N45PM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Barrow County Airport (WDR), Winder, GATo Harrisburg-Raleigh Airport (HSB)
- 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
- Approach
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Proper glidepath, not attained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was damaged when it impacted the ground while performing a GPS approach in instrument weather conditions. The aircraft was on the third GPS approach attempt when the accident occurred. The pilot said that the runway, "...was sighted at about 3/4 of mile and [at] MDA. The [runway] lights were in sight and I had a good clear view of the [runway]... Everything looked fine visually until just before the accident. As we neared the [runway] it became apparent that the [runway] was rising in the window. I added power to stop the descent, however, there was a significant delay (much longer than normal) in the response of the engine. The engine finally spooled and at that moment a gust lifted the right wing and the left wing dropped, I corrected but there was not enough altitude and the left wing impacted the ground." The pilot said that he, "... had logged the engine parameters on this flight since the engine just had a compressor wash and everything indicated the engine was performing, as it should." The minimum descent altitude for the approach is 364 feet above the elevation of the airport. The Automated Weather Observing System at the destination airport recorded the sky condition as 200 feet overcast with a visibility of 1 1/2 statute miles. The winds were recorded as 080 degrees at 3 knots. No preexisting anomalies were found with respect to the aircraft.
Probable cause
The pilot not attaining the proper glidepath on the instrument approach. The pilot's decision not to fly to an alternate airport and his decision to continue the approach in weather conditions below the published minimums were contributing factors.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI01LA048
- Event ID
- 20001220X45451
- Case number
- CHI01LA048
- 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: 1c6d8b75b017808aa0e7ba02885d2bdbaa6f4777ebd1852b5fc794f55d908a4a; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:01:57.178Z.