MIA96LA173 · Piper PA-23-150
Knoxville Flight Training CTR Piper PA-23-150 · Accident: propeller failure/malfunction during initial climb
From DKX to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA96LA173
- 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
- 0 · 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-23-150
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-23
- 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
- N3061P
- Operator
- Knoxville Flight Training CTR
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From DKXTo 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Propeller failure/malfunction
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Propeller system/accessories, hub › Fatigue
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Shortly after takeoff, about 50-75 feet above the runway, one of the two propeller blades from the left propeller separated. The FAA designee took the controls and landed the airplane with the landing gear extended on grass adjacent to the runway. The airplane traveled off the runway and came to rest upright with the nose landing gear collapsed. Examination of the left propeller revealed that the blade No. 1 hub arm failed due to fatigue. Review of the propeller maintenance records revealed that the propeller was last overhauled on October 18, 1985, and had accumulated a total time of 2,979.7 hours since manufacturer and 963.2 hours since overhaul.
Probable cause
Fatigue failure of the blade No. 1 hub arm of the left propeller.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA96LA173
- Event ID
- 20001208X06308
- Case number
- MIA96LA173
- 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: c435e2cf4cdb1d6c792b9fa432dc28e5b32b4318ad0c347a2fb8053d8341bd5e; retrieved 2026-09-22T22:01:33.763Z.