MIA01LA113 · Larry R. Kinsey Variez O-235
Larry R. Kinsey Variez O-235 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water en route
From Tuscaloosa National Airport (TCL) to Northeast Alabama Regional Airport (GAD)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA01LA113
- 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
- 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
Larry R. Kinsey Variez O-235
- Aircraft type
- Larry R Kinsey VARIEZ O-235
- 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
- N49LK
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tuscaloosa National Airport (TCL), Tuscaloosa, ALTo Northeast Alabama Regional Airport (GAD), Gadsden, AL
- 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
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, continued
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 departed Tuscaloosa, Alabama, enroute to Gadsden, Alabama. When the flight did not arrive, search and rescue operations were initiated. The airplane wreckage was located on April 6, 2001, at about the 1,000 foot msl level, on the west side of Village Mountain, near Pinson, Alabama. Examination of the crash site showed the airplane had flown from a valley, easterly, into rising terrain. The airplane crashed into trees while in cruise flight and came to rest about 100 feet from the top of the mountain. All components of the airplane were located at the crash site. Post crash examination of the aircraft structure, flight controls, engine, and propeller, showed no evidence of precrash failure or malfunction. The Birmingham International Airport surface observation taken about 13 minutes after the accident was clouds 500 feet overcast with visibility 3 miles in drizzle. Birmingham is located 15 statute miles south-southeast of the accident site, at an elevation of 636 feet msl. The person who lives in the residence adjacent to the accident site reported that on the day of the accident the clouds obscured the mountain and visibility was low all day. The FAA had no record that the pilot had received a weather briefing from an FAA facility.
Probable cause
The pilot's continued visual flight rules flight into instrument meteorological conditions resulting in the airplane colliding with mountainous terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA01LA113
- Event ID
- 20010412X00739
- Case number
- MIA01LA113
- 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: 634389e4873b9a4dfb76b3fa2372276449ae1bf03343bfbed8b511f83d510ccb; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:37:02.836Z.