ATL07LA067 · Piper PA28-181
Piper PA28-181 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Neil Armstrong Airport (AXV) to Gatlinburg-Pigeon Forge Airport (GKT)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL07LA067
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Piper PA28-181
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA28
- 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
- N30465
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Neil Armstrong Airport (AXV), Wapakoneta, OHTo Gatlinburg-Pigeon Forge Airport (GKT), Pigeon Forge, 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 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); 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to witnesses, the airplane was observed coming down out of the "clouds" and then climbing back up into the clouds. The second time they saw it come down out of the "clouds it was on its side" and then went out of site and they heard a loud crash. Examination of the airframe, flight controls, and engine did not reveal any mechanical anomalies that would have contributed to the accident. The pilot had accumulated less than 200 total hours, and was not instrument rated. He elected to continue his flight into instrument meteorological conditions and lost control.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control. Contributing to the accident was the non-instrument rated pilot's continued flight from visual meteorological conditions into instrument meteorological conditions, and a low cloud ceiling.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL07LA067
- Event ID
- 20070403X00368
- Case number
- ATL07LA067
- 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: 7aa85d0d5a7abcee1f17f3c9f55ea3394ea9f8f71fdc172ca1e97f98a108fb8a; retrieved 2026-09-20T16:45:57.945Z.