ATL07FA102 · Piper PA-32-260
Piper PA-32-260 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Wiscasset Airport (IWI) to Columbia County Airport (1B1)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL07FA102
- 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
Piper PA-32-260
- 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
- N5595J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wiscasset Airport (IWI), Wiscasset, METo Columbia County Airport (1B1), Hudson, NY
- 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
- 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
- Design stress limits of aircraft › Exceeded
- Pilot in command › Flight into adverse weather, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a personal instrument flight, the pilot encountered thunderstorms and the airplane separated in-flight over Tyringham, Massachusetts. The pilot obtained a preflight weather briefing and was also advised of a significant meteorological information (SIGMET) during the flight. Control continuity could not be established due to the fragmentation of the wreckage. However, the separation signatures were found to be consistent with the control surfaces being installed and operational at the time of the break-up. Examination of the airframe, flight controls, and engine did not reveal any mechanical anomalies. Review of air traffic control (ATC) data revealed that a relief controller had been briefed to turn the accident airplane due to weather; however, the relief controller failed to issue weather information or initiate a flight deviation around known and clearly observed weather, despite very little traffic and a light workload at the time.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadvertent encounter with thunderstorms during cruise flight. Contributing to the accident was the failure of air traffic control to appropriately issue weather information and initiate an in-flight deviation around known and clearly observed weather.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL07FA102
- Event ID
- 20070716X00939
- Case number
- ATL07FA102
- 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: 1fbc72d5f257aedf57c5101eb0afbbbde9fbb903904acf01d3bce187a2256700; retrieved 2026-09-20T16:29:59.203Z.