MIA01FA060 · Piper PA-28R-180
Piper PA-28R-180 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Henry Tift Myers Airport (TMA) to Shanghai Pudong International Airport (PVG)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA01FA060
- 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
- Unknown
- 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-180
- 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
- N3996T
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Henry Tift Myers Airport (TMA), Tifton, GATo Shanghai Pudong International Airport (PVG)
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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
- Wire, static
- 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
- Object › Wire, static
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Spatial disorientation
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight proceeded VFR, without a flight plan, until a location about 40 miles southwest of the destination airport. Due to weather at the destination, the pilot filed and was given an IFR clearance. He was cleared to descend to 3,000 feet, proceed to the initial approach fix for the ILS runway 20 approach, and subsequently cleared for the approach, via the published procedure turn. The minimum altitude for the procedure turn was 1,600 feet. According to the controller's statement, he requested an altitude report from the pilot, and had to advise him his "assigned altitude was 3,000…..he was at various altitudes from 2,000 to 2,700." The last radar plot at 1823:47, showed the flight was at 2,100 feet, still in the procedure turn, when radar and radio communications were lost. The airplane struck wires about 35 feet above the ground, about 11.5 miles north of the airport. The pilot had accumulated a total of 4,015 total flight hours, all in single engine aircraft, and 137 hours in this make and model aircraft. In addition, the logbooks showed that he had 324 total night flight hours, 135 simulated instrument flight hours, and 105 actual instrument flight hours. The pilot had logged a total of 10.6 instrument flight hours for the entire years of 1999 and 2000. July 12, 2000, was the last entry that showed .4 of an hour instrument flight time. Examination of the engine, propeller, and the vacuum pump revealed no discrepancies. The accident occurred during the hours of darkness, and the reported weather at about the time of the accident was; 300 overcast, visibility 1 sm light rain, winds calm, temperature 55 degrees F, dew point 54 degrees F, and the altimeter was 30.19 inches Hg. Toxicological tests revealed that Chlorpheniramine was found in the urine and blood at levels consistent with a normal single dose of the medication within approximately the previous 24 hours. Chlorpheniramine use can result in drowsiness, and has measurable effects on performance of complex cognitive and motor tasks (e.g. flying an aircraft). It may also interfere with the normal function of the inner ear, potentially increasing susceptibility to spatial disorientation.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane due to spatial disorientation, which resulted in an in-flight collision with power lines and the subsequent impact with terrain. A factor in this accident was: the pilot's lack of recent instrument flight experience.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA01FA060
- Event ID
- 20010122X00337
- Case number
- MIA01FA060
- 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, coordinates. 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: b6629bf620c49bf1ebba25b4c5cbbbabc416b1ac97941e02e3891206a16b38a4; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:41:47.410Z.