MIA96FA148 · Aeronca O-58B
Aeronca O-58B · Accident: in flight collision with object while maneuvering
From 7A1 to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA96FA148
- 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
Aeronca O-58B
- Aircraft type
- Aeronca O-58
- 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
- N49546
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 7A1To 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
- 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
- In flight collision with object
- 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
- 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
- Pilot in command › Altitude/clearance, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot had flown into the area, picked up a passenger, and had just departed the airport when the airplane struck a power line that crossed over the lake he was flying over. The airplane then impacted the lake and sank. The passenger stated that the reason they were flying over the lake 'at such a low altitude,' was that they were 'just sightseeing...[and] did not see the wires.' A witness standing on the shore near the boat docks observed the airplane fly directly over his location, heading in a northwesterly direction. He stated that the airplane flew low over him and had cleared the tops of the trees by an estimated altitude of '1 to 200 feet.' After the airplane past over him and was heading away from him, over the lake, he said to another person 'I bet he didn't know about the power lines...since he was flying so low.' About that time the witness heard the airplane strike the wires. The witness further stated, '...in my opinion the aircraft was developing power and operating normally up until impact.' Examination of the airframe revealed a wire strike mark on the leading edge about mid-span of the left wing. Examination of the engine did not reveal any discrepancies. The wooden propeller was still attached to the crankshaft flange, but the tips of both blades were missing. A search was conducted on the bottom of the lake for the missing propeller blades, with negative results. The power lines in the vicinity of the crash site consisted of 8 cables supported by two towers located on both sides of the lake. The cables crossed the lake in an east-west direction. The bottom cables were about 50 feet above the lake, and the top cables were about 150 feet above the lake. The third cable from the top, had been repaired, and according to the police, the cable was broken before they had arrived at the crash site.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain adequate altitude/clearance from power lines while maneuvering at a low altitude.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA96FA148
- Event ID
- 20001208X06056
- Case number
- MIA96FA148
- 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: f7296395ed3954233e2676db73c88d5267f5050a5a29a3144b27afd50fd03356; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:20:45.082Z.