MIA97FA049 · Piper PA-30
Piper PA-30 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) on approach
From Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI) to Seymour Johnson Air Force Base (GSB)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA97FA049
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-30
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-30
- 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
- N8220Y
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Possible conflict
- From Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI), Baltimore, MDTo Seymour Johnson Air Force Base (GSB), NC
- 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
- Approach
- 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)
- 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
- Fuel exhaustion; Tree(s)
- 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 › IFR procedure, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Review of transcripts revealed the pilot departed Baltimore, Maryland VFR at about 0746 to obtain fuel locally for a cross country flight to Florida. No flight plan or weather briefing had been filed or obtained prior to departure. The pilot was unable to land, encountered IFR flight conditions and filed an IFR flight plan to Florida. En route, the pilot diverted to another airport for fuel. He was cleared for an ILS approach and informed prior to beginning the approach that the weather was below minimums. The pilot made a missed approach, and informed the controller a short time later that he had lost one engine. The controller coordinated with the U.S. Air Force to allow the pilot to conduct a PAR approach, and declared the airplane an emergency. The pilot was cleared for a PAR approach. The approach was terminated by the controller, the changed to a surveillance approach which resulted in a missed approach. The pilot was vectored for another PAR approach, and it was subsequently changed to a no gyro approach. The controller informed the pilot he was too far left for a safe approach, and to climb to 1800 and fly a heading of 260 degrees. Radar contact was lost 1 mile southwest of the airport. Examination of the wreckage revealed that the fuel tanks were not ruptured and that no fuel was present. Also, a review of the pilots logbook revealed he did not meet FAA instrument recurrency requirements.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to follow instrument approach procedures during numerous instrument approaches and missed approaches which resuled in a total loss of engine power on both engines due to fuel exhaustion. Factors contributing to the accident were: the pilot's failure to obtain a weather briefing prior to his departure and his lack of recent instrument flight experience.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA97FA049
- Event ID
- 20001208X07206
- Case number
- MIA97FA049
- 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: 5ff114415091b09e76266ead6199e271311e1e1e111700da4eaa27b46f681dd1; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:04:24.910Z.