MIA94FA044 · Piper PA-46-310P
Piper PA-46-310P · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Naples Municipal Airport (APF) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA94FA044
- 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
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-46-310P
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-46
- 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
- N243KW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Naples Municipal Airport (APF), Naples, FLTo not recorded
- 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
- Approach · circling (IFR)
- 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 control in flight
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Stall/mush; Tree(s)
- 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
- Pilot in command › Airspeed, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Altitude, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Stall/mush, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PILOT WAS EXECUTING AN ASR APPROACH TO RUNWAY 32 AND 9 SECONDS AFTER THE APPROACH CONTROLLER ADVISED THE PILOT THAT THE FLIGHT WAS OVER THE MISSED APPROACH POINT, THE PILOT ADVISED THE CONTROLLER THAT THE AIRPORT WAS IN SIGHT AND HE WOULD BE CIRCLING TO LAND. THE CONTROLLER ACKNOWLEDGED THIS AND WITNESSES OBSERVED THE AIRPLANE FLYING NORTHWESTERLY WEST OF RUNWAY 32 ABOUT 150-200 FEET ABOVE GROUND LEVEL. THEY THEN OBSERVED THE AIRPLANE ENTER A LEFT BANK BETWEEN 60-80 DEGREES AND THE AIRPLANE PITCHED NOSE DOWN AND COLLIDED WITH TREES THEN A FENCE AND THE GROUND. THERE WAS A SMALL POST CRASH FIRE WHICH WAS EXTINGUISHED BY THE FIRE DEPARTMENT. EXAMINATION OF THE AIRFRAME REVEALED NO EVIDENCE OF PREIMPACT FAILURE OR MALFUNCTION OF THE FLIGHT CONTROLS. THE ENGINE WAS REMOVED AND PLACED ON A TEST BENCH AND AFTER REPLACEMENT OF SEVERAL COMPONENTS WHICH WERE IMPACT DAMAGED, THE ENGINE STARTED AND OPERATED NORMALLY. THE PASSENGER WAS SEATED IN THE FURTHEST AFT RIGHT SEAT AND THE LAP BELT ATTACH POINT ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THIS SEAT FAILED DUE TO OVERLOAD.
Probable cause
AIRSPEED NOT MAINTAINED, INADVERTENT STALL/MUSH, AND ALTITUDE INADEQUATE FOR RECOVERY FROM THE INFLIGHT LOSS OF CONTROL BY THE PILOT-IN-COMMAND WHILE CIRCLING FOR LANDING.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA94FA044
- Event ID
- 20001206X00655
- Case number
- MIA94FA044
- 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: 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: aa7886267b10759d78bc4654669e58abd3c2b3eb6d3b68b37d992f6f5d8b1d18; retrieved 2026-09-21T00:16:38.570Z.