ERA13FA101 · Piper PA-30
Piper PA-30 · Accident during an uncontrolled descent
From Walker County Airport Bevill Field (JFX) to Walker County Airport Bevill Field (JFX)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA13FA101
- 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
- 3 · 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-30
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-30
- 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
- N7700Y
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Walker County Airport Bevill Field (JFX), Jasper, ALTo Walker County Airport Bevill Field (JFX), Jasper, AL
- 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
- Uncontrolled descent
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Experience/knowledge
- Personnel issues › Miscellaneous
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the airport manager, who was also a flight instructor, the student pilot had completed 10 hours of dual instruction in a single-engine airplane and completed three supervised solos. After the student pilot's third supervised solo, he discontinued his training with the airport manager and enrolled in a flight program at a community college. The airport manager did not know if the student pilot continued with his training. A review of the student pilot's records revealed that he had no entries or endorsements related to multiengine, night, or instrument flights.
Instrument meteorological conditions existed on the night of the accident. An airport security video showed the accident airplane taxiing to the active runway. Shortly thereafter, the airplane's strobe lights can be seen reflecting off of the runway and then illuminating in the low clouds; the strobe lights then disappear from the camera's view. A witness in the area reported hearing an airplane flying low and then the sound of a loud crash. The witness subsequently contacted the local authorities, and the airplane was located 1 mile from the airport in a heavily wooded area. The airplane's owner reported that he had not given the student pilot permission to use the airplane. An examination of the airplane did not reveal any anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The student pilot’s poor judgment to take a multiengine airplane for which he did not have experience or permission to operate and depart into night instrument meteorological conditions, which resulted in a loss of airplane control and impact with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA13FA101
- Event ID
- 20130102X72037
- Case number
- ERA13FA101
- 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 2013-01-02.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 9c382b92f4990dd23a2ac6c37a5883539e24f5c30b30c06626a3e9302e760405; retrieved 2026-09-14T15:51:29.650Z.