MIA03FA071 · Piper PA-28R-201T
Piper PA-28R-201T · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Key West International Airport (KEYW) to Tallahassee International Airport (KTLH)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA03FA071
- 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-28R-201T
- 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
- N6369C
- Operator
- Augustus R. Winchester · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Key West International Airport (KEYW), Key West, FLTo Tallahassee International Airport (KTLH), Talllahassee, 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 · 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
- 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
- Pilot in command › In-flight briefing service, disregarded
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight experienced an in-flight breakup during a VFR flight into instrument meteorological conditions. The pilot did not obtain a preflight weather briefing before departure but he did obtain three in-flight weather briefings from the Miami Automated Flight Service Station. During one of the briefings he was provided information about the location of a front that existed along the intended route of flight. About 32 minutes before the accident, the non-instrument rated pilot advised the controller that he was flying in the clouds and was trying to maintain VFR. The pilot was asked if he wanted to obtain an IFR clearance and asked for assistance to avoid the clouds several times; he was advised what radar could and could not depict. About 1 minute before the accident, the controller advised the pilot that he was depicting a heavy weather echo at his twelve o'clock position and 2.5 miles. The pilot responded by stating that he needed assistance. The controller provided a heading for the pilot to fly but the pilot did not acknowledge that transmission. The controller then advised on the frequency for the pilot not to turn that tight and to level the wings. That transmission was also not acknowledged by the pilot. Recorded radar data shows the aircraft descended from 12,600 feet to 8,800 feet MSL, before the flight path entered an area of depicted weather echoes. The flight subsequently went into a left descending turn, reaching a descent rate in excess of 5000 feet per minute. Post-accident examination of the aircraft did not reveal evidence of mechanical malfunction. Review of the pilot's logbook revealed he logged 15 hours actual instrument flight time on 34 flights as pilot-in-command (PIC); the entries for these flights did not contain a signature by a certified flight instructor or safety pilot. He also logged actual instrument flight time as PIC before receiving his private pilot certificate. In the area and time of the accident, no SIGMET's, Convective SIGMET's, or Center Weather Advisories were in effect. The pilot's medical was expired at the time of the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate in-flight planning/decision by his continued VFR flight into instrument meteorological condition after receiving an in-flight weather advisory. Also causal was his failure to maintain aircraft control, which resulted in flight that exceeded the design limits of the aircraft and resulted in an in-flight breakup. Contributing factors were the pilot's overconfidence in his personal ability, and the failure of the National Weather Service to issue an Airmet to identify IFR conditions for the area of the accident.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA03FA071
- Event ID
- 20030306X00294
- Case number
- MIA03FA071
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2003-03-04.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 29f5a919d348a3e8de570c37823b0535b2efd367144213c98575cb39b7d8a10d; retrieved 2026-09-20T19:25:16.137Z.