MIA97FA010 · Cessna 172F
Cessna 172F · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during initial climb
From Venice Municipal Airport (VNC) to Punta Gorda Airport (PGD)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA97FA010
- 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
Cessna 172F
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- 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
- N5130F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Venice Municipal Airport (VNC)To Punta Gorda Airport (PGD), Punta Gorda, FL
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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
- Owner/builder › Maintenance, inadequate
- Owner/builder › Maintenance, service of aircraft/equipment, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot/owner changed the engine oil and cleaned the oil screen 1 week before the accident but he did not perform an engine run-up after to check for oil leaks. The morning of the accident before takeoff he taxied the airplane in a circuit, stopped and checked for oil leaks but did not observe an oil stain on the ground in front of his hangar. He taxied to the runway, performed an engine run-up, then performed a 360-degree clearing turn before taking off. After takeoff while climbing through 1,200 feet, the oil pressure and engine rpm's began dropping. He initiated a turn to return to the airport and the engine quit. He executed a forced landing onto the roof of a supermarket. Examination of the engine compartment revealed that the oil temperature probe securing nut was loose. Additionally, only residual oil remained in the engine crankcase. Examination of the taxi route and the engine run-up area revealed oil stains on the ground. Oil was also observed externally on the bottom of the fuselage from the engine compartment to the tail.
Probable cause
inadequate maintenance servicing of the airplane during an oil change by the owner/pilot for his failure to secure the oil temperature probe securing nut. Also, inadequate maintenance of the airplane by the owner/pilot for his failure to operate the engine with the engine cowling removed following the oil change to check for oil leaks. Contributing to the accident was the lack of suitable terrain encountered during the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA97FA010
- Event ID
- 20001208X06938
- Case number
- MIA97FA010
- 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: 6373c7e8e9999cc0f4c647b0ea75c4cf89c8ec7906dec40217b3dec63de7af66; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:33:22.376Z.