MIA95FA183 · Piper PA-32R-300
Piper PA-32R-300 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) on approach
From Knoxville Downtown Island Airport (DKX) to 49J
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA95FA183
- 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
Piper PA-32R-300
- 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
- N38188
- Operator
- Steven L. Coffey · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Knoxville Downtown Island Airport (DKX), Knoxville, TNTo 49J
- 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 · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Tree(s); Wire, transmission
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
- Terrain condition › None suitable
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight departed Knoxville, TN, at 1220 edt with full fuel tanks. About 1 hour before the planned arrival at Hilton Head, SC, the pilot advised the FBO that the flight would be about 30 minutes late. The flight continued, and when near the airport, the pilot requested an airport advisory. He announced his intentions to enter a downwind leg and to make a long final approach to runway 3. Witnesses saw the airplane low on final approach, then observed that the airplane banked away from the airport, while descending. Subsequently, it collided with 80-foot tall trees, then a powerline, the ground, and a telephone pole. The airplane came to rest upright with the empennage separated aft of the wings. A postcrash fire destroyed the cockpit and cabin section. Examination of the flight controls revealed no evidence of preimpact failure or malfunction. Examination of the engine revealed water contamination at the fuel manifold and servo fuel injector. Operators of other airplanes, fueled by the same source on the same day, had no indication of fuel contamination.
Probable cause
loss of engine power for undetermined reasons, and the unsuitable terrain encountered during the emergency landing. A factor in the accident was the pilot's extension of the downwind leg which prevented landing on the intended runway following loss of engine power in the traffic pattern.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA95FA183
- Event ID
- 20001207X04021
- Case number
- MIA95FA183
- 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: e1197ca1167d89ae8f33c320c648abc2bda2e19b0a131eafc0a7860006eaafe3; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:42:12.842Z.