IAD01FA013 · Piper PA-28-140
Piper PA-28-140 · Accident: in flight collision with object en route
From CSG · College Park, MD to GSO · Greenville, SC
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD01FA013
- 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
- N513FL
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From CSG · College Park, MDTo GSO · Greenville, SC
- 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 object
- 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 › Flight into adverse weather, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
About 2 hours before departure, the instrument rated pilot obtained weather information from DUATS. The weather information he selected included surface observations, radar summaries, and terminal forecasts for the area along his intended route of flight. The pilot did not request or obtain in-flight weather advisories, which were issued for IFR conditions, mountain obscuration, icing, and turbulence along the intended route of flight. Review of surface observations for airports along the intended route of flight, indicated that instrument meteorological conditions prevailed. The pilot departed on the night cross country flight without filing a flight plan. The airplane was reported missing, and was located 9 days later in mountainous terrain. The wreckage was located at an elevation of about 2,600 feet MSL, and the height of the mountain was about 3,211 feet MSL. Initial tree impact scars encompassed several trees, and appeared to be level along the tops of the trees. The width of the scars was about 30-feet and became progressively lower and narrower in the direction of the wreckage. Examination of the airplane and engine revealed there were no mechanical deficiencies.
Probable cause
Pilot's continued flight into known adverse weather conditions during cruise flight. Factors in the accident were the low ceiling, dark night, and the pilot's failure to obtain in-flight weather advisories.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD01FA013
- Event ID
- 20001220X45454
- Case number
- IAD01FA013
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2000-11-10.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 806caffd308c32622dad6fe47efe0eafd312f6e1a380ed8484a826a0caed6ca0; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:47:38.015Z.