ATL04CA108 · Sawyer Skybolt
Sawyer Skybolt · Accident: in flight collision with object en route
From Louisville Winston County Airport (LMS) to Merdian, MS
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL04CA108
- 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
- 0 · 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
Sawyer Skybolt
- Aircraft type
- Sawyer SKYBOLT
- 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
- N32DS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Louisville Winston County Airport (LMS), Louisville, MSTo Merdian, MS
- 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 object
- 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
- Guy wire
- 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
- Object › Guy wire
- Pilot in command › Visual lookout, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane collided with a guy wire while in low altitude cruise near Philadelphia, Mississippi. The pilot had just passed over Philadelphia Municipal Airport and turned left to a heading of 140 degrees, cruising at an altitude of 1600 feet. The pilot stated that at the reduced power setting of 2000 RPM, the airplane had a slightly higher angle of attack than normal cruise. After about 8 minutes on the heading of 140 degrees, the pilot felt a shock on the airframe and heard a loud noise. The airplane turned 30 degrees to the left. The airplane was still flyable so the pilot proceeded to the nearest airport, Barrett Field in Philadelphia, Mississippi and landed without incident. The pilot did not report any mechanical malfunctions with the airplane. Examination of the airplane revealed that both left wings were broken off from the middle portion of wing, left wing spar damaged and the left aileron almost completely detached. The pilot stated that "aircraft with characteristics of tandem seating with Pilot-In-Command in the rear, and forward visibility obscured to any degree above the level flight path should not be flown for long periods on a steady heading. Small course changes, left and right will eliminate the obscured area."
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to see and avoid a guy wire which resulted in an in-flight collision.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL04CA108
- Event ID
- 20040524X00636
- Case number
- ATL04CA108
- 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: 635960013732af9516a59d7fca4f33a302e273ece8d3f99befc2ea2ef27c48be; retrieved 2026-09-22T07:38:03.565Z.