MIA95FA089 · Piper PA-22-150
Piper PA-22-150 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) while maneuvering
From Piedmont Triad International Airport (GSO) to 5W8 · Siler City, NC
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA95FA089
- 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
- 1 · 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-22-150
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-22
- 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
- N7545D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Piedmont Triad International Airport (GSO), Greensboro, NCTo 5W8 · Siler City, NC
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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
- Fuel exhaustion; Stall
- 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 › Airspeed(vso), not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A witness stated he heard a change in engine noise from an airplane flying towards his location. He looked up and saw the airplane descending in a dive estimated at a 45-degree nose-down attitude. The airplane began at right spiraling turn at treetop level, when the nose pitched down vertically, the airplane disappeared from view below the tree line. Just before the airplane collided with the ground, the engine noise quit completely. Examination of airframe, flight controls, engine assembly and accessories revealed no evidence of a precrash failure or malfunction. Both fuel tanks were ruptured. There was no evidence of damage to the vegetation consistent with fuel spillage, and there was no odor of fuel present at the crash site.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain airspeed (VSO) while maneuvering during a forced landing, resulting in an in-flight loss of control (inadvertent stall), and subsequent in flight collision with terrain. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's inadequate preflight planning/preparation to ensure there was adequate fuel available for the flight, resulting in a total loss of engine power from fuel exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA95FA089
- Event ID
- 20001207X03157
- Case number
- MIA95FA089
- 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: 118e8d15e72cefd8623e809fd82c19b2ee0df2e82e122c329b058d9a7f4f8c6f; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:50:46.964Z.