ATL02FA010 · Cessna 310Q
Cessna 310Q · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during initial climb
From Smith Reynolds Airport (INT) to Centerville Municipal Airport (GHM)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL02FA010
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Cessna 310Q
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 310
- 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
- N7648Q
- Operator
- Allen W. Watson · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Smith Reynolds Airport (INT), Winston Salem, NCTo Centerville Municipal Airport (GHM), Centerville, TN
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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
- Tree(s)
- 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
- Flight control, elevator tab › Disconnected
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, installation, improper
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to Air Traffic Control (ATC) Transcripts, the pilot departed runway 22 at the Smith Reynolds Airport at 1112, enroute to Centerville, Tennessee. At 1113, the pilot reported that he was returning with a problem. At 1116, the pilot reported that he was experiencing "a lot of down pressure on the yoke". The pilot subsequently experienced a loss of control and the airplane collided with a tree in a residential area. Examination of the elevator found a bolt and castellated nut missing on the elevator trim tab control rod at the trim tab jackscrew. There was no evidence that the bolt had broken or sheared as a result of impact forces. Examination of the forward trim tab push-pull rod clevis revealed that its dry, oxidized condition indicated that the attaching bolt was missing for an undetermined time prior to the accident, and that the damage to the trim tab push-pull rod indicated that it was in the full up position (elevator full down) at the time of impact. The airframe had accumulated 3,650 hours of total time at the time of the accident and had accumulated 35 hours since its last inspection when all the flight controls were removed, stripped, re-painted, balanced and re-installed.
Probable cause
Improper installation of the elevator trim tab control rod by maintenance personnel which allowed the control rod to disconnect and jam in the full up position (elevator full down) while in-flight. This resulted in a loss of directional control and subsequent impact with trees and terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL02FA010
- Event ID
- 20011114X02235
- Case number
- ATL02FA010
- 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: 151a141541ec8aa2c791b1f0e927c99e78eb61ce16ee78b481a787def4ebce8b; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:18:11.268Z.