ATL03FA062 · Cessna 320D
Cessna 320D · Accident: in flight encounter with weather while maneuvering
From Abernathy Field (GZS) to Perry, GA
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL03FA062
- 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
- 1 · 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
Cessna 320D
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 320
- 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
- N4137T
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Abernathy Field (GZS), Pulaski, TNTo Perry, GA
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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); Tree(s)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Altitude/clearance, not maintained
- 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
Upon approaching the destination airport, the pilot established radio contact with Approach Control, and reported a cruise altitude of 7,500 feet. and a 138- degree heading. The pilot was issued the current altimeter setting and he requested current weather for Perry, Georgia. The nearest weather reporting facility reported 600-foot ceiling and 7 miles visibility. Later into the radio conversation, the pilot was asked if he was instrument qualified and the pilot stated he was instrument qualified. When the controller asked the pilot for his current flight conditions, the pilot reported that he was at 1300 feet and requested a direct heading to Perry. The controller told the pilot that the airport was 10 miles off his two o'clock position. At 2226:04, radio and radar contact was lost with the airplane. Witnesses near the accident site observed a fireball followed by a crashing sound. Within minutes, the airplane wreckage was located, and the passenger was rescued. Examination of the accident site disclosed that wreckage debris was scattered over an area 850 feet long and 75 feet wide. The examination of the wreckage path also revealed several fresh gouges in the dirt, and there were paint chips and other debris from the airframe embedded in the ground. There were also several fire-damaged pieces of airframe material scattered throughout the wreckage path. The fire-damaged rudder assembly was lodged in a tree about 400 feet south of the main wreckage. The main wreckage, which consisted of the airframe center section cockpit and empennage, was wrapped around the base of a pecan tree 725 feet north of the first freshly damaged pecan tree along the wreckage path. The left engine assembly was 75 feet northwest of the main airframe. Examination of the wreckage debris failed to disclose a mechanical malfunction or component failure.
Probable cause
The pilot continued visual flight into instrument meteorological conditions, and his failure to maintain altitude/terrain clearance.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL03FA062
- Event ID
- 20030324X00372
- Case number
- ATL03FA062
- 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 2003-03-16.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 8ed2c121c825c6b01372613fbb8014c27336b93623ce8a763ea06549b65c5a2b; retrieved 2026-09-20T19:23:38.141Z.