FTW01FA101 · Piper PA-34-220T
Piper PA-34-220T · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water while maneuvering
From San Antonio International Airport (SAT) to Del Rio International Airport (DRT)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW01FA101
- 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-34-220T
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-34
- 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
- N4312G
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From San Antonio International Airport (SAT), San Antonio, TXTo Del Rio International Airport (DRT), Del Rio, TX
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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 › Flight into known adverse weather, attempted
- Pilot in command › Judgment, poor
- Pilot in command › Low altitude flight/maneuver, intentional
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot obtained three weather briefings prior to takeoff for a visual flight rules night cross-country flight. According to the weather briefings, thunderstorms, heavy rain and hail were forecast for the destination area. The pilot radioed a flight service station over a flight watch frequency while en route to obtain updated weather for the destination. The pilot was informed that rain had passed through the destination airport area within the previous hour and that there were thunderstorms northwest of the airport. The airplane disappeared from radar 13 minutes following this in-flight weather update. The radar data depicted the airplane descending from 2,800 feet to 2,300 feet prior to disappearing from radar coverage. The last two radar returns depicted the airplane making a turn towards the northwest. One of the surviving passengers stated that while en route, "the weather started getting bad." The airplane struck trees in hilly terrain approximately 1,675 feet msl. No aircraft or engine anomalies were noted that would have prevented normal operations. The pilot's toxicology tests indicated that he was taking sertraline, an antidepressant medication. The FAA did not issue the pilot a medical certificate at the time of his last medical application.
Probable cause
the pilot's intentional low flight and his poor judgment to intentionally fly into known adverse weather, which resulted in an in-flight collision with terrain. Contributing factors were the dark night conditions and the thunderstorm.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW01FA101
- Event ID
- 20010430X00834
- Case number
- FTW01FA101
- 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, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2001-04-23.
- API snapshot SHA-256: aebbe7b053cd3de6754a9f8b897e9b5f8b6197fc1c90648f3109ccf273b07f4f; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:35:02.526Z.