ATL02FA043 · Piper PA-32-300
Piper PA-32-300 · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From DeKalb Peachtree Airport (PDK) to Savannah Hilton Head International Airport (SAV)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL02FA043
- 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
- 4 · 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-32-300
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N4105W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From DeKalb Peachtree Airport (PDK), Atlanta, GATo Savannah Hilton Head International Airport (SAV), Savannah, GA
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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 › 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 recently instrument-rated pilot departed on an instrument flight in instrument meteorological conditions with low ceilings and turbulence. Radar data showed the airplane climbed to the assigned altitude but failed to maintain the assigned heading. Radar data indicated the airplane flew a path that included two wide, constant-rate, 360-degree turns to the right. Air traffic controllers twice reassigned the heading, and the pilot acknowledged the instructions each time. About eight minutes after departure, the pilot reported the airplane was in a spin, and the airplane impacted terrain seconds later in a steep, nose-down attitude less than two miles from the airport. The wreckage was found scattered along a path 200 feet long by 80 feet wide in a wooded area. Fuel was present at the site, and examination revealed no evidence of mechanical malfunction of the engine, airframe, or recovered instruments.
Probable cause
The pilot experienced spatial disorientation that resulted in the loss of control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL02FA043
- Event ID
- 20020212X00206
- Case number
- ATL02FA043
- 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: 724af029e6c9a6b26de547cd483917755ac40aed858c1aca8ff9a351ffce44cd; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:13:19.073Z.