ATL07FA002 · Cessna 177
Cessna 177 · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From 4A0 · Stockbridge, GA to St Simons Island Airport (SSI)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL07FA002
- 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
- 4 · 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
Cessna 177
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 177
- 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
- N2320Y
- Operator
- Durwood C. Smith · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 4A0 · Stockbridge, GATo St Simons Island Airport (SSI), Brunswick, 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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
- Stall; Tree(s); Wire, static
- 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 › Aircraft weight and balance, exceeded
- Pilot in command › Airspeed, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates corrected after review: The narrative describes a crash just past "the departure end of the runway" on takeoff from 4A0, Stockbridge, GA; the recorded latitude 32.54 is about 110 km south of Stockbridge, and 33.54 at the same longitude is the Stockbridge airport area (a one-digit error). No uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to a witness the airplane "struggle" to get airborne, and the engine was running at full power. The airplane barely cleared a tree at the departure end of the runway before "stalling" and impacting another tree. Other witnesses reported that the airplane clipped a tree then collided with power lines. Shortly thereafter, an explosion was heard. The airplane was unable to climb due to its over gross weight condition. Weight and balance calculation revealed that the airplane was 102 pounds over gross weight. Examination of the airframe and engine components revealed no mechanical or flight control problems.
Probable cause
The pilot's attempted takeoff over the allowable takeoff gross weight of the airplane and his failure to maintain airspeed during climb after takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL07FA002
- Event ID
- 20061013X01514
- Case number
- ATL07FA002
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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: 45f3495755e14b2a0006d308923a75a7918cbb8b9b5d4277ecff86874a1318f0; retrieved 2026-09-20T17:02:11.076Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: coordinates. The narrative describes a crash just past "the departure end of the runway" on takeoff from 4A0, Stockbridge, GA; the recorded latitude 32.54 is about 110 km south of Stockbridge, and 33.54 at the same longitude is the Stockbridge airport area (a one-digit error).