ATL96LA122 · American AA5
American AA5 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Destin-Fort Walton Beach Airport (KVPS) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL96LA122
- 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
American AA5
- Aircraft type
- American AA5
- 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
- N1198D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Destin-Fort Walton Beach Airport (KVPS), EGLIN AFB, FLTo 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
- En route · climb to 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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
- Pilot in command › Powerplant controls, improper use of
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor stated that he had given the student a simulated engine-out emergency. The student completed the emergency procedure, and had initiated a climb from the low approach when the engine failed to develop power. A 1700-foot long airstrip was selected for the emergency landing. The airplane went off the departure end of the west runway and collided with the ground. During the postaccident examination, the engine was functionally checked. The engine started and operated normally without difficulty. No mechanical problems were noted during the wreckage examination. The review of weather date disclosed that conditions were favorable for the formation of carburetor ice. The flight instructor reported using the carburetor heat. During a subsequent conversation, he stated that the engine was not cleared for more than 2 minutes during the descent for the simulated emergency.
Probable cause
the pilot's improper operation of the powerplant controls.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL96LA122
- Event ID
- 20001208X06421
- Case number
- ATL96LA122
- 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: b2124db77b969cb763ecc3b29aa453de8794d16cca18d8be8023615e1b3f84e2; retrieved 2026-09-21T12:32:37.484Z.