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Air South Flight 168

6 Jul 1969 · Bold Springs, 10 kilometres northwest of Monroe, Georgia United States

Beech B99 · On Air South Flight 168 a serious aviation accident occurred on 6 July 1969 near Monroe in the American state of Georgia

From Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL) to Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport (GSP)

Show on map NTSB source dataset Read the German Wikipedia article
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Event

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
Unknown
Event fatalities
14 · all aircraft and ground
Ground fatalities
0
Occupants
Unknown
Survivors
0
InjuriesFatal: death within 30 days. Serious: over 48 hours in hospital within a week, most broken bones, severe bleeding, nerve or organ damage, or serious burns. Minor: anything less. Glossary
0 serious · 0 minor (NTSB)
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
Airline
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

Beech B99

Aircraft type
Beechcraft 99
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
N844NS
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL)To Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport (GSP)
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 121: Air carrier (scheduled domestic passenger service)
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
Uncontrolled collision with ground/water
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

  • Personnel › Poor/inadequate design
  • Systems › Other

Approximate · Coordinates from the Wikipedia article; not checked against an investigation report.

From the Wikipedia article

On Air South Flight 168 a serious aviation accident occurred on 6 July 1969 near Monroe in the American state of Georgia. A Beechcraft 99 of the regional airline Air South crashed to the ground after a loss of control, killing all 14 people on board.

Accident sequence

Around eleven minutes after the aircraft had reached its cruising altitude of 7,000 ft, the elevator trim began to trim the elevator fully to the stop (full-nose-down position). Despite the remedial measures initiated six seconds later, the strength of both pilots was not sufficient to overcome the extremely mistrimmed position of the elevator with the control column and to recover the aircraft. As a result, the aircraft went into a dive; the resulting high speed caused both wings to exceed their load limits and break off a few hundred feet above the ground, before the aircraft finally struck the ground almost vertically. The aircraft crashed near Bold Springs, ten kilometres northwest of Monroe (Georgia), killing all 14 people on board.

Investigation and cause

Cause

The NTSB was unable to determine the cause of the trim malfunction, but attributed a contributing role in the development of the loss of control to the design of the entire control system.

Translated into English with AI assistance from the German Wikipedia article “Air-South-Flug 168” (revision 252304852, retrieved 2026-09-19) by its authors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Extracted as plain text: references, tables, images and some sections are left out; the translation may contain errors, and long articles were cut to their first 700 words. Read the article

NTSB remarks

FLT CTL SYS MALFUNCTIONED.UNWANTED LONGL TRIM RESULTED IN NOSE DWN HI SPEED FLT.PLTS UN RECOVER.

NTSB's remark from its 1962–1981 archive, as recorded (abbreviated, at most 98 characters): the archive has no narrative

Sources

German Wikipedia article: Air-South-Flug 168
Article
Air-South-Flug 168
Translation
Into English with AI assistance; names of linked operators and aircraft types from Wikidata. It may contain errors.
Revision
252304852 · 2025-01-16 · retrieved 2026-09-19
Wikidata
Q93990317
Licence
Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record
Event ID
19690706P030166
Case number
Unknown
Dataset
historical-pre1982
Source SHA-256
abe1a933b4b73583d61684309f7f0610c281e3c1de3537c6471bf2a98ba6481d
Where each value comes from
Record
de Wikipedia article "Air-South-Flug 168" (page 11259178, revision 252304852), translated into English with AI assistance; merged with NTSB case NTSB19690706P030166 (PRE1982 tblFirstHalf (one row per aircraft, grouped by date, place and time))
Date
NTSB record NTSB19690706P030166: PRE1982 DATE_OCCURRENCE
Place and country
Wikipedia infobox: site; country from NTSB record NTSB19690706P030166
Map position
Wikipedia: Wikipedia article coordinates
Aircraft, operator and route
NTSB record NTSB19690706P030166: PRE1982 REGIST_NO, ACFT_MAKE, ACFT_MODEL; gaps from Wikipedia infobox: aircraft type, registration, operator, origin and destination; route airports from the linked airport articles' Wikidata codes (OurAirports)
Operation
NTSB record NTSB19690706P030166: operated under Part 121: Air carrier (scheduled domestic passg.svc)
Fatalities
NTSB record NTSB19690706P030166: PRE1982 TOTAL_ABRD_FATAL of each aircraft, plus people on the ground and others outside the aircraft
Ground fatalities
NTSB record NTSB19690706P030166: events.inj_f_grnd
Summary
Wikipedia article lead
Source notes (4)
  • One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "Air South Flight 168" and NTSB case NTSB19690706P030166, matched by the same aircraft registration and date. For this US event the NTSB's values are used where the two differ; each value names its source.
  • From NTSB's 1962-1981 archive (PRE1982), which holds at most a short remark (98 characters, abbreviated) instead of a narrative; the accident type, phase of flight, causes and conditions are NTSB's codes, decoded as the archive defines them.
  • Reviewed means this record passed the site's consistency check, not that it was checked against a narrative or report - there is none to check against.
  • The operation category is mapped from the archive's operator and operation codes and has not been reviewed.