ATL07LA119 · Cessna P206
Cessna P206 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water while maneuvering
From Herlong Airport (HEG) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL07LA119
- 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
Cessna P206
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 206
- 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
- N904DZ
- Operator
- Daren Alva Ramphal
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Herlong Airport (HEG), Jacksonville, FLTo not recorded
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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 terrain/water
- 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 › Suicide
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A pilot/employee of a skydive business departed with a company airplane before business hours. The pilot's girlfriend alerted local authorities that the pilot had called her at 0400, as he was depressed over their recent breakup. She told officials that he was planning to use a small airplane to attempt suicide. She further stated that he had been drinking and taking medication. Local officials arrived at the airport at 0524 and observed the airplane take off and depart to the southwest. The Civil Air Patrol received an emergency locator transmitter signal at 1022 and located the wreckage at 1530. The disposition of the wreckage was consistent with a high-energy impact. At the conclusion of the airframe and engine examination, no evidence of any preimpact mechanical failures or malfunctions were found. Forensic toxicology testing performed on specimens from the pilot detected 270 mg/dL (0.26 percent) ethanol in the blood and 315 mg/dL ethanol in the urine. Toxicology testing was also consistent with recently discontinued use of an antidepressant and the use of a different medication used for seizures, movement disorders, and certain mental conditions.
Probable cause
The pilot committed suicide. Contributing to the event was the pilot's impairment due to alcohol.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL07LA119
- Event ID
- 20070830X01273
- Case number
- ATL07LA119
- 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. 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: ba7d712405d9a16b3aa6985d61f0f8927d08663953f5363db8891cb50ac83e64; retrieved 2026-09-20T16:20:03.791Z.