ATL02FA162 · American General Aircraft AA-5B
American General Aircraft AA-5B · Accident: in flight encounter with weather on approach
From Zephyrhills Municipal Airport (ZPH) to Zephyrhills Municipal Airport (ZPH)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL02FA162
- 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
American General Aircraft AA-5B
- Aircraft type
- American General AA-5
- 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
- N81189
- Operator
- James Rex
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Zephyrhills Municipal Airport (ZPH), Zephyrhills, FLTo Zephyrhills Municipal Airport (ZPH), Zephyrhills, 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
- Approach
- 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
- Pilot in command › Flight into known adverse weather, continued
- Weather condition › Fog
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Witnesses near the accident site reported they heard an airplane flying low over the neighborhood prior to the approximate time of the accident. Shortly after hearing the low flying airplane, an explosion was heard. Witnesses discovered a nearby home engulfed in flames, and confirmed that a small airplane had collided with the home. Witnesses reported the weather conditions were foggy and very dark at the time of the accident. Lakeland Regional Airport, located 16 nautical miles southeast of Zephyrhills Airport, 0650 weather observation, reported winds calm, sky conditions scattered at 200 feet above ground level (AGL), visibility 1 statue mile, mist, temperature 25 celsius, dewpoint 25 celsius, and the altimeter setting was 30.02. The Vandenberg Airport, weather observation located 16 nautical miles southwest of Zephyrhills Airport, reported at 0552, winds 050 degrees and 5 knots, overcast sky at 500 feet AGL, visibility 1.5 statue miles, with mist, temperature 25 Celsius, and dewpoint 25 Celsius. There was no record of the pilot receiving a weather briefing before departure.
Probable cause
The pilots continued visual flight into instrument conditions (fog), and subsequent collision with a tree and a residence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL02FA162
- Event ID
- 20020909X01550
- Case number
- ATL02FA162
- 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: 696cb775c67197dafafe058f31976f1c868f9bbf22b467617cd7cf478a786f4a; retrieved 2026-09-20T19:53:34.540Z.