MIA95FA114 · North American AT-6D
North American AT-6D · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Waycross Ware County Airport (AYS) to Vero Beach Regional Airport (VRB)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA95FA114
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
North American AT-6D
- Aircraft type
- North American AT-6
- 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
- N319DR
- Operator
- Morrison, Donald C. · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Waycross Ware County Airport (AYS), Waycross, GATo Vero Beach Regional Airport (VRB), Vero Beach, 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 · 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
- Total loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- 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
- 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(vs), not maintained
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Sebastian, FL, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The flight was observed flying southbound over the ocean at about 300 feet and 200 yards from shore. The aircraft's engine was heard to sputter and lose power. The aircraft was observed to make a right 90-degree turn toward the beach. Upon reaching the beach the aircraft started a left turn and then entered a nose down descent from which it crashed on the beach. Postcrash examination of the engine showed the No. 5 cylinder master rod and the connecting rods from the Nos. 1, 4, and 6 cylinders had failed. The engine showed no evidence of oil starvation or excessive heating. The cause of the connecting rod failures was not determined.
Probable cause
The failure of the pilot-in-command to maintain airspeed while maneuvering for a forced landing following loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA95FA114
- Event ID
- 20001207X03336
- Case number
- MIA95FA114
- 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: 1682ad455acb3e09f73df5e8c0f078e3d7fa1bb7ca9bfcac489491cf72b2ba17; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:48:30.057Z.