CEN15FA347 · Grumman American AVN. CORP. AA 5A
Grumman American AVN. CORP. AA 5A · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) en route
From 5M9 · Marion, KY to Veterans Airport of Southern Illinois (MWA)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN15FA347
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Grumman American AVN. CORP. AA 5A
- Aircraft type
- Grumman American AA-5
- 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
- N9684U
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 5M9 · Marion, KYTo Veterans Airport of Southern Illinois (MWA), Marion, IL
- Aircraft age
- About 40 years (built 1975)
- 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
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot departed for a cross-country personal flight with one passenger on a moonless night. Meteorological and astrological conditions on the night of the accident included a convective system near the accident site about the time of the accident with no moon illumination. No radar data associated with the accident airplane were identified.
Before reaching the destination airport, the student communicated to his spouse that he was returning to the airport, presumably to his point of departure. The airplane was located the following day in an unlit, heavily wooded area of a national forest. Impact signatures were consistent with the airplane's right wing striking tree tops before the airplane descended and impacted terrain in a nose-low attitude.
A postaccident examination of the airframe and engine did not reveal any preimpact anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. The student's logbook was not recovered, and his total and night flying experience could not be determined. It also could not be determined whether he had received any solo endorsements.
The student should not have taken off in dark, night conditions, and it is likely that, as he entered an area with little to no ambient light and cloudy weather conditions, he had no ground references or natural horizon, which resulted in his subsequent controlled descent into terrain.
Probable cause
The student pilot's improper decision to conduct a flight in dark, night conditions and his subsequent controlled flight into terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN15FA347
- Event ID
- 20150811X02029
- Case number
- CEN15FA347
- 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 2015-08-10.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 1d940f132ace3d69b9cd7d886af6fba9169851a20b898537ccfccdfc221021c3; retrieved 2026-09-14T19:49:26.110Z.