IAD01FA039 · Piper PA-24-250
Piper PA-24-250 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water en route
From W66 · Warrenton, VA to Winchester Regional Airport (OKV)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD01FA039
- 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
Piper PA-24-250
- 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
- N5841P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From W66 · Warrenton, VATo Winchester Regional Airport (OKV), Winchester, 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 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
- Substantial
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 instrument rated pilot was ferrying his airplane from Warrenton-Faquier Airport (W66), Warrenton, Virginia, to Winchester Regional Airport (OKV), Winchester, Virginia, for an annual inspection. About 3 hours prior to departing, the pilot called flight service and told the briefer that he "would like to make a quick VFR flight from Warrenton over to Winchester", and wanted to know if he was "going to get a clear shot this afternoon for VFR." The briefer informed the pilot that the weather was forecasted to be visibility greater than 6 miles with a "best" overcast ceiling of 3,000 feet. The pilot did not request or receive the AIRMET that was issued and valid for mountain obscuration in Virginia. The airplane collided with mountainous terrain at the 1,604 foot level of the 1,880 foot high mountain in instrument meteorological conditions. When the airplane was reported missing, an air search could not be conducted due to low clouds, and a ground search was initiated. A Virginia State Trooper stated that the mountain had been fogged in on the day of the accident. Data extracted from a hand held GPS recovered depicted a northwesterly flight track from W66 toward OKV. The last recorded track point was superimposed over the accident site. Examination of the airplane and engine revealed no mechanical deficiencies.
Probable cause
pilot's continued visual flight into instrument meteorological conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD01FA039
- Event ID
- 20010413X00744
- Case number
- IAD01FA039
- 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: 0ff7847b4006f903acf63453395a323e0577056f64732aaf33d906a37917830a; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:37:31.897Z.