ERA10FA040 · Cessna 310J
Cessna 310J · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Gwinnett County Briscoe Field (LZU) to Upper Cumberland Regional Airport (SRB)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10FA040
- 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
- 1
- 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
Cessna 310J
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 310
- 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
- N308J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Gwinnett County Briscoe Field (LZU), Lawrenceville, GATo Upper Cumberland Regional Airport (SRB), Sparta, 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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 › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot departed from the airport under instrument meteorological conditions on an instrument flight rules flight plan. Weather included a 300-foot overcast cloud layer and 1 mile visibility with light rain and mist. Shortly after takeoff, the air traffic controller lost radio contact with the pilot, and witnesses observed the airplane rolling under full power as it descended out of the clouds. The airplane subsequently collided with a house about 4 miles northwest of the airport. A postaccident examination of the airplane and engine did not reveal any evidence of a pre-existing mechanical failure or malfunction that precluded normal operation. Based on the wreckage and the environmental conditions present at the time of the accident, it is likely that the pilot experienced spatial disorientation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s loss of aircraft control while maneuvering in instrument meteorological conditions, as a result of spatial disorientation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10FA040
- Event ID
- 20091030X45242
- Case number
- ERA10FA040
- 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, 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: 55b8698c82a70d336aa41d662b7ca638757637c0407c61bb959754acc991a4e9; retrieved 2026-09-13T17:57:28.806Z.