ATL02FA051 · Piper PA-28-180
Piper PA-28-180 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From North Palm Beach County General Aviation Airport (F45) to Orlando Executive Airport (ORL)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL02FA051
- 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-28-180
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N7345W
- Operator
- Manuel Penalver
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From North Palm Beach County General Aviation Airport (F45), Palm Beach, FLTo Orlando Executive Airport (ORL), Orlando, FL
- 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 encounter with weather
- 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
- Airframe › Separation
- Weather condition › Turbulence
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
At 1117 the pilot called Miami Center stating that he was leaving 4,500 feet for 5,000 feet. At 1140 Miami Center advised the pilot several times that radar contact was lost, but there was no response, and there was no further contact with the pilot. Examination of the wreckage on-scene, found the cockpit, engine, and a small portion of the aft empennage in a confined area with the cockpit and instruments fire damaged. The wings, vertical stabilizer, horizontal stabilator, and pieces of the empennage were found scattered within 500 feet of the cockpit area. The right aileron and flap, were not located. A review of available weather data showed that a frontal boundary was situated in the vicinity of the accident location. The Melbourne Doppler radar indicated that a moderate rain shower was near the accident location at the accident time. In addition, the radar's Velocity Azimuth Display wind profiles around the accident time indicated that the wind below 3,000 feet was from the north-northeast and the wind at 5,000 feet was from the south at 15-20 knots producing updrafts of localized severe to extreme turbulence. Pilot reports indicated that Instrument Meteorological Conditions were present in the accident area.
Probable cause
The flight's encounter with isolated severe to extreme turbulence that resulted in an in-flight breakup of the airplane and subsequent impact with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL02FA051
- Event ID
- 20020301X00291
- Case number
- ATL02FA051
- 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: dd3f6588e627c2a9cb6360d6494688aaf1045c0d2453b2e0ecc7eca0a2ccba9e; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:11:23.815Z.