ERA10CA006 · Piper PA-28-140
Piper PA-28-140 · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) during initial climb
From Jackson County Airport (1A7) to City of Murfreesboro Airport (MBT)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10CA006
- 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
- 0 · 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 PA-28-140
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N95472
- Operator
- Duran Jerome J
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Jackson County Airport (1A7), Gainesboro, TNTo City of Murfreesboro Airport (MBT), Murfreesboro, 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a visual flight rules cross-county flight, the pilot elected to make an unscheduled landing to obtain updated weather information. The pilot subsequently elected to depart from runway 36, a 3,500-foot-long, unlighted, asphalt runway. It was a dark night and the pilot used glow sticks to illuminate points around the runway. The pilot reported that the takeoff and initial climb were normal, but that he did not have any further recollection of the flight. The airplane subsequently impacted trees along rising terrain northwest of the airport, substantially damaging the airplane. A witness who heard the airplane depart stated that the engine noise was "loud" with no fluctuations. Examination of the airplane by a Federal Aviation Administration Inspector did not reveal any preimpact malfunctions. The pilot received his private pilot certificate about 3 months prior to the accident and reported about 120 hours of total flight experience.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance from trees. Contributing to the accident were the rising terrain and night light conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10CA006
- Event ID
- 20091005X03950
- Case number
- ERA10CA006
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2009-10-05.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 235ccfd6c652726c5d6cbc05108e6c45d021efb076a71921cb58950affbe30cb; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:22:45.698Z.