MIA97FA040 · Piper PA-34-200T
F and B Aviation Piper PA-34-200T · Accident: loss of engine power during initial climb
From Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport (BHM) to Pensacola International Airport (PNS)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA97FA040
- 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
- 3 · 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-34-200T
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-34
- 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
- N872SD
- Operator
- F and B Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport (BHM)To Pensacola International Airport (PNS), Pensacola, 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
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Emergency procedure, not followed
- Pilot in command › Propeller feathering, not performed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
When queried after takeoff, the pilot informed ATC that the left engine was not developing full power, and that he was having difficulty in maintaining altitude. The pilot was attempting to return to the departure airport when the airplane collided with trees and a chimney, then it crashed in a residential area. Examination of the left and right engine did not reveal any condition that would have caused an operational problem. Neither propeller was in the feather position. Two work orders had been signed off on the day of the accident; one indicated that the airplane was in an airworthy; the other (with a later invoice number) indicated that the airplane was not in an airworthy condition. A review of pilot log sheets showed that the pilot had prevously flown the Piper PA-34 between 1/13/86 and 10/6/91; since that period, he had only flown it once, which was on the day before the accident. Reportedly, during that flight, he had flown the airplane for one hour, but did not practice emergency procedures.
Probable cause
failure of the pilot to follow emergency procedures and feather the malfunctioning engine, which led to a forced landing and subsequent collision with a chimney (residence) and the terrain. His lack of recent experience in make/model of aircraft was a related factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA97FA040
- Event ID
- 20001208X07203
- Case number
- MIA97FA040
- 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: ddbb3d6830f0c8b70e5b43bb3c0c74db84d01b3f70c8c43458189256c38d6c5c; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:05:05.672Z.