MIA99LA073 · Piper PA-32-260
Tropical Aircraft Piper PA-32-260 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Orlando International Airport (MCO) to Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport (FXE)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA99LA073
- 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
- 0
- 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
Piper PA-32-260
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N5528J
- Operator
- Tropical Aircraft
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Orlando International Airport (MCO)To Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport (FXE), Fort Lauderdale, FL
- 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 · climb to cruise
- First occurrenceThe 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that while climbing after takeoff the engine lost power. He turned back to the departure airport. Witnesses observed the aircraft descending rapidly in a left turn and impact the runway with the left wing and nose area of the aircraft. The aircraft caught fire, slid down the runway inverted, and came to rest. The pilot and passenger exited the aircraft through the main door. Post crash examination of the engine showed 9 of 12 cam followers were broken due to overstress. No foreign objects were found in the engine and no other evidence of failure or malfunction in the engine were found. Weight and balance calculations showed the aircraft was about 396 pounds over the maximum allowable takeoff weight.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to an engine assembly overload for undetermined reasons. A related factor was the pilot exceeded the airplane's maximum allowable weight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA99LA073
- Event ID
- 20001205X00204
- Case number
- MIA99LA073
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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 1999-02-03.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ba8fdb3fdbec2ee85d8f0c7cb3e06e5f1fb60e260773bb538f027d55c20d28f6; retrieved 2026-09-21T11:12:54.105Z.