ATL03FA089 · Piper PA-32-300
Piper PA-32-300 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Campbell County Airport - Colonel Tommy C Stiner Airfield (JAU) to Twin Forks Airport (GA77)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL03FA089
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-32-300
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N32038
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Campbell County Airport - Colonel Tommy C Stiner Airfield (JAU), Jacksboro, TNTo Twin Forks Airport (GA77), Rome, 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
- 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 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
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Weather condition › Turbulence(thunderstorms)
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the preflight weather briefing, the pilot was advised numerous times about the adverse weather conditions along his route of travel. He was also advised that visual flight rules could not be maintained from Jacksboro, TN, to Rome, GA, and there were active tornado watches. The pilot stated that he would still be departing shortly after the phone call with the Anniston Flight Service Station. The flight was due back in Geneva, AL (where the trip originated) on May 5, 2003, approximately 1500 central daylight time but never arrived. The pilot made no reports of any mechanical or flight control anomalies during the flight. On May 5, 2003 the Civil Air Patrol initiated an air search, but postponed search activities due to inclement weather conditions. On May 8, 2003, the air search commenced, and at 1945 eastern daylight time air spotters located the wreckage site of the downed airplane. The air spotters circle the site until the ground crews arrived, and at 2330, the ground crews made a positive identification of the downed airplane. At the conclusion of the airframe, and engine examination, no evidence of flight control or mechanical malfunction was identified.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to obtain a preflight weather briefing, which would have indicated that MVFR to IFR conditions prevailed over the route with embedded thunderstorms and rain, and his decision to continue VFR flight into instrument meteorological conditions, which resulted in the flight impacting terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL03FA089
- Event ID
- 20030516X00678
- Case number
- ATL03FA089
- 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: e88b54d5ed04b04137f03c4e4fef8a3ba109a264042f048dafb5ea782e933062; retrieved 2026-09-20T19:15:43.885Z.