ERA09FA487 · SOCATA TB20
SOCATA TB20 · Accident: VFR encounter with IMC en route
From Montgomery Regional (Dannelly Field) Airport (MGM) to North Perry Airport (HWO)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA09FA487
- 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
SOCATA TB20
- Aircraft type
- Socata TB20
- 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
- N654GT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Montgomery Regional (Dannelly Field) Airport (MGM), Montgomery, ALTo North Perry Airport (HWO), Hollywood, 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 · cruise
- Defining eventThe 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
- VFR encounter with IMC
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot left the departure airport on a visual flight rules flight. He did not file a flight plan. While over the accident site, the pilot entered into instrument meteorological conditions, with multiple layers of clouds, rain, and mist. Weather reporting locations near the accident site reported instrument flight rules conditions with thunderstorms and rain, ceiling overcast at 500 to 600 feet above ground level. The National Weather Service area forecast expected widely scattered to numerous rain showers and thunderstorms over the region at the time of the accident. Examination of the crash site indicated that the left wing separated from the airplane in an upward direction while in flight. Fractures in the wing spar were consistent with overstress separation. Examination of the aircraft and engine showed no evidence of precrash failure or malfunction prior to separation of the left wing.
Probable cause
The pilot’s continued visual flight into instrument meteorological conditions, with embedded intense thunderstorms, heavy rain, and severe to extreme turbulence, resulting in an in-flight separation of the left wing due to overstress.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA09FA487
- Event ID
- 20090828X42457
- Case number
- ERA09FA487
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: f86b33c616de3165a160bbb69e71c60df592ab4abbd8a39b5ee066daf23b4c7c; retrieved 2026-09-13T20:26:51.661Z.