ATL03FA070 · Cessna 172R
Knoxville Flight Training Center Cessna 172R · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water en route
From Columbia Metropolitan Airport (CAE) to Knoxville Downtown Island Airport (DKX)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL03FA070
- 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 172R
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- 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
- N35255
- Operator
- Knoxville Flight Training Center
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Columbia Metropolitan Airport (CAE), Columbia, SCTo Knoxville Downtown Island Airport (DKX), Knoxville, TN
- 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 collision with terrain/water
- 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 › Altitude/clearance, not maintained
- Terrain condition › Mountainous/hilly
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was receiving flight following from the Knoxville Downtown Airport Tower. The pilot requested the Automated Weather Observing System frequency and started his descent to the Knoxville Downtown Airport. At 2035, radio and radar contact was lost. At 2042, the airplane's emergency locator transmitter emergency signal was heard over the emergency frequency. Local authorities initiated a search for the missing airplane, and the downed airplane was located on March 28, 2003, at 1000 in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, at Klingman's Dome, at an elevation of approximately 6,400 feet. The airframe examination revealed no evidence of mechanical anomalies. The engine examination revealed no evidence of any mechanical anomalies.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain adequate terrain clearance, which resulted in an in-flight collision with mountainous terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL03FA070
- Event ID
- 20030402X00421
- Case number
- ATL03FA070
- 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 2003-03-28.
- API snapshot SHA-256: a8671a81b5a7aec729efba7d8d4463ee3395371254efaccf4ab93579879c2368; retrieved 2026-09-20T19:21:04.647Z.