FTW02FA192 · Piper PA-24-260
Piper PA-24-260 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Dublin Municipal Airport (9F0) to 2F5 · Lamesa, TX
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW02FA192
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-24-260
- 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
- N8681P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dublin Municipal Airport (9F0), Dublin, TXTo 2F5 · Lamesa, 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
- 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
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Design stress limits of aircraft › Exceeded
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
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 lost control of the airplane, which experienced an in-flight break-up, after encountering instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) while on a visual flight rules (VFR) cross-country flight. There was no record of a weather briefing or air traffic control (ATC) communications for the accident airplane. Radar data, assumed to be that of the accident airplane, revealed it was climbing from 7,300 to 8,500 feet before descending rapidly to 4,700 feet, which was the altitude of the last radar return. The radar data depicted the airplane making a left turn followed by a right turn (the right turn took place during the rapid descent). The aircraft fuselage was located approximately 4,500 feet southwest from the last radar return. The wreckage was distributed along a 1.4-mile wreckage path. Weather radar data at the time of the accident was overlayed onto the ATC radar data. The combined information depicted the airplane flying through the leading edge of a precipitation cell that was in the area. The pilot's logbooks were not located, therefore, his instrument currency and experience was left undefined. No anomalies were noted with the airplane, engine, or its flight instruments that would have contributed to the accident. No distress calls were received from the airplane.
Probable cause
The pilot's loss of control and the exceedence of the design limits of the airplane which resulted in an in-flight break-up. A factor was inadvertent VFR flight into IMC.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW02FA192
- Event ID
- 20020710X01078
- Case number
- FTW02FA192
- 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: 0538ef3a7bfbe4b145bf0df118e9bad0d12df9e73aec4ca36463ac3af1e94892; retrieved 2026-09-20T19:58:40.722Z.