ERA17FA180 · Beech A36TC UNDESIGNAT
Beech A36TC UNDESIGNAT · Accident: VFR encounter with IMC while maneuvering
From Davenport Municipal Airport (DVN) to Northwest Alabama Regional Airport (MSL)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA17FA180
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Beech A36TC UNDESIGNAT
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 36
- 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
- N1804E
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Davenport Municipal Airport (DVN), Davenport, IATo Northwest Alabama Regional Airport (MSL), Muscle Shoals, AL
- Aircraft age
- About 36 years (built 1981)
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Psychological
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The noninstrument-rated private pilot and the passenger were on a personal cross-country visual flight rules (VFR) flight in the airplane, and the pilot was in contact with air traffic control and receiving flight following services as he deviated due to weather along the route of flight. The pilot talked with a controller about diverting to a nearby airport, but he opted to continue, stating that the flight would likely be clear of the weather shortly based on the information he was receiving from his on-board equipment. Weather radar and satellite imagery indicated that the flight encountered instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) before it departed from controlled flight and entered a steep descent that continued to terrain impact. Examination of the airframe and engine did not reveal evidence of any preimpact mechanical malfunctions that would have precluded normal operation.
The pilot had received about 71 hours of simulated instrument flight training and had accumulated about 16 hours in actual instrument conditions, though his most recent instrument training flight was more than 1 year before the accident. The pilot's decision to continue VFR flight into IMC may have been influenced by an overreliance on his limited instrument training that led him to underestimate the difficulty of maintaining airplane control in actual instrument conditions. After the airplane entered IMC, the pilot likely experienced spatial disorientation and lost control of the airplane. Although the pilot was using two medications (imipramine and doxylamine) that may have affected his aeronautical decision-making and increased his susceptibility to spatial disorientation, it could not be determined whether effects from these drugs contributed to the accident.
Probable cause
The noninstrument-rated pilot's intentional visual flight rules flight into instrument meteorological conditions, which resulted in a loss of airplane control due to spatial disorientation. Contributing to the accident were the pilot's overreliance on his limited instrument training.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA17FA180
- Event ID
- 20170512X42326
- Case number
- ERA17FA180
- 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. 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: 8c1673ea81910cfd181cacd3ae109bb9c8aabec3a2b9c269e7a9932f12a88fb4; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:02:23.672Z.