ATL06FA029 · Cirrus Design Corp. SR22
Cirrus Design Corp. SR22 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Jackson County Airport (24A) to Pensacola International Airport (PNS)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL06FA029
- 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
Cirrus Design Corp. SR22
- Aircraft type
- Cirrus SR22
- 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
- N799TM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Jackson County Airport (24A), Sylva, NCTo Pensacola International Airport (PNS), Pensacola, 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 · climb to 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
- 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 › 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 aircraft collided with trees and terrain after encountering forecasted instrument meteorological conditions. About 30 minutes before the accident the pilot N799TM contacted the FAA Gainesville, Georgia, Flight Service Station (FSS), requested to file an instrument flight plan, and received a weather briefing for a flight from the Jackson County Airport in Sylva, North Carolina, to Pensacola, Florida. The Gainesville FSS briefer informed the pilot of the current weather conditions, and referenced a flight precaution for mountain obscuration throughout the day. The pilot stated to the briefer that he was looking through a hole right now, and was pretty sure he could stay VFR. The pilot also informed the briefer "he could see the top of the clouds, and see a little bit of the blue". The briefer also informed the pilot of a flight precaution for moderate turbulence below ten thousand feet. The pilot stated, "that he would be looking for it". Prior to departing, the pilot inquired as to how to activate an IFR flight plan once he departed. The briefer informed the pilot he could open the IFR flight plan once airborne. There were no further communications with the airplane once airborne. Witnesses in the vicinity of the accident site reported hearing an airplane flying low in a southerly direction. The sound of the engine faded away, and then "rev-up" followed by the sound of trees breaking with a loud "thump". The witnesses stated "that you could not see more that 50-feet in front of you", and that it was very foggy. A search team was dispatched and was unable to locate the airplane due to inclement weather conditions in the area. The airplane was located the following day on the side of the Savannah Ridge Mountain at an elevation of 4,400 feet, 5 miles south of the Jackson County Airport. Post accident examination of the airframe, flight controls, engine assembly, and accessories revealed no anomalies.
Probable cause
The pilot's continued VFR flight into IMC conditions resulting in a collision with mountainous terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL06FA029
- Event ID
- 20060112X00059
- Case number
- ATL06FA029
- 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: 4a012f126cf741578276fa568e8caf73d1fbf59b6475c299beb151800c27aa3a; retrieved 2026-09-20T17:39:35.572Z.