ATL03FA041 · Piper PA-24-250
Piper PA-24-250 · Accident: loss of control in flight during an uncontrolled descent
From Ormond Beach Municipal Airport (OMN) to Marlboro County Jetport - H E Avent Field Airport (BBP)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL03FA041
- 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
- 3 · 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-24-250
- 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
- N5587P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ormond Beach Municipal Airport (OMN), Ormond Beach, FLTo Marlboro County Jetport - H E Avent Field Airport (BBP), Bennettsville, SC
- 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
- Uncontrolled descent
- 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
During a cross-country instrument flight at 5,300 feet the pilot radioed that he was having difficulty maintaining altitude. The air traffic controller reported the lost of radar and radio contact with the airplane at 1853. Local authorities were notified, and launched a ground and air search for the downed airplane. The airplane wreckage was located in a wooded area at 0815 on February 7, 2003. Examination of the wreckage did not reveal any airframe or mechanical malfunctions. According to the Federal Aviation Administration Advisory Circular #60-4A: during periods of low visibility a pilot is particularly vulnerable to spatial disorientation.
Probable cause
The pilot experienced spatial disorientation, which resulted in a loss of control and the subsequent collision with the ground. A factors was dark night and clouds.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL03FA041
- Event ID
- 20030210X00191
- Case number
- ATL03FA041
- 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: 924fb9e35b8c335a3ca716eb9364517df15c70ea59b5db29049acdea11bd62ec; retrieved 2026-09-20T19:28:30.589Z.