ERA14CA062 · Anderson Andreas RANS S-6S SUPERSIX
Anderson Andreas RANS S-6S SUPERSIX · Accident: VFR encounter with IMC en route
From John C Tune Airport (JWN) to Greenville Downtown Airport (GMU)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA14CA062
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Anderson Andreas RANS S-6S SUPERSIX
- Aircraft type
- Anderson Andreas RANS S-6S
- 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
- N581TC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From John C Tune Airport (JWN), Nashville, TNTo Greenville Downtown Airport (GMU), Greenville, SC
- 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
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, he departed the Nashville, Tennessee area earlier in the day and was en route to his destination of Greenville, South Carolina at 9500 feet above mean sea level (msl). He stated that he checked the automated surface observing systems weather report and that the clouds in the Morristown, Tennessee area were reported to be at 7,000 feet above ground level. He added that he knew that he would be able to clear the mountains just below the recorded ceiling height when needed. The pilot was operating under the provisions of day visual flight rules (VFR) on top of the broken/overcast cloud layer prior to beginning the descent through the clouds. During the descent, the pilot stated that the ceiling appeared lower than reported and he elected to climb back up to VFR on top. During this process, the pilot became disoriented, hit a tree, and impacted the side of a mountain. Examination of the airplane by a Federal Aviation Administration inspector revealed substantial damage to the fuselage, wings, and empennage. The recorded ceiling and visibility at Greenville Downtown Airport, Greenville, South Carolina, about 10 nautical miles to the southeast of the accident site was an overcast ceiling at 800 feet msl and the visibility was 9 statute miles. The pilot reported that there were no pre-impact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's decision to continue visual flight into deteriorating weather, which resulted in an encounter with instrument meteorological conditions and subsequent inability to maintain clearance with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA14CA062
- Event ID
- 20131204X65412
- Case number
- ERA14CA062
- 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: 171742335efebc5fa22b0af0101579bcc8046834592e15239dd407a7683b0985; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:09:44.034Z.