MIA96IA094 · Piper PA-31-310
Piper PA-31-310 · Incident on approach
From Roscoe Turner Airport (CRX) to Charlotte Douglas International Airport (CLT)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA96IA094
- 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
- Incident
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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-31-310
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-31
- 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
- N7451L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Roscoe Turner Airport (CRX), Corinth, MSTo Charlotte Douglas International Airport (CLT)
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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 · IFR final approach
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- None
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Incapacitation(cardiovascular)
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During flight, one of the passengers (a single engine rated pilot) was seated in the right front seat. After arriving at the destination, the pilot initiated an ILS approach; however, before landing, a full deflection of the localizer CDI was noted, and the pilot executed a go-around. The pilot rated passenger stated that about 15 seconds later, the pilot released the control yoke, rested against his own seat back, and began to have convulsions. The pilot rated passenger began flying the airplane and advised ATC of the situation. The controller vectored the flight for landing, and the pilot rated passenger was initially unable to release the autopilot. At one point during the flight, the pilot's hand pulled the left engine mixture control to the idle cutoff position, but engine power was restored after the pilot rated passenger repositioned the mixture control. The pilot rated passenger landed the airplane; however, during the landing roll, he did not have access to the airplane's brake system. The airplane rolled off the left side of the runway onto grass, but was not damaged. Subsequently, the pilot was pronounced dead. After a post-mortem examination, the cause of death was listed as coronary atherosclerosis/hypertensive heart disease. According to the pilot's wife, he had no previous complaints suggestive of heart disease.
Probable cause
fatal incapacitation of the pilot due to a heart attack.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA96IA094
- Event ID
- 20001208X05448
- Case number
- MIA96IA094
- 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, damage. 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: f215dded2cee98db5349bfd61de905fcef831e27a40385acffb353ae7dab9099; retrieved 2026-09-18T13:38:30.528Z.