MIA97LA094 · Piper PA-28-161
Piper PA-28-161 · Accident: on ground/water collision with object while taxiing
From Peter O Knight Airport (TPF) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA97LA094
- 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-28-161
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N4345C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Peter O Knight Airport (TPF)To 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
- Taxi · to runway
- 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
- On ground/water collision with object
- 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 › Taxispeed, excessive
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Tampa, FL, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The pilot had landed and was taxiing back to the departure runway using the adjacent taxiway, when the airplane struck a tractor that was cutting grass to the left of the taxiway. The tractor was mowing along the taxiway lights and was travailing to the northeast, halfway on the hard surface and halfway into the grass. The tractor driver was approaching each light, lifting his mower, passing over the light and lowering the mower again to mow in between the lights. According to the tractor driver he was 'traveling in a straight line, and was sure he had not turned out in front of the approaching airplane.' At the time of impact the driver stated that he was watching the mower and did not see the airplane until after the impact. The airplane approached the tractor from behind and he was unaware that it was coming until it hit the tractor. A witness said, '...I saw aircraft N4345C, taxing on the taxiway parallel to runway 21 and 3...toward runway 21, at an excessive rate of speed, and the tractor mowing at the side of the taxiway was going in the same direction, when the aircraft hit the back of the tractor, with the left wing without trying to slow down or stop....'
Probable cause
the pilot's excessive taxispeed.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA97LA094
- Event ID
- 20001208X07595
- Case number
- MIA97LA094
- 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: 1b1eff5454c5a473a8e2b4b4b6197e999f3861d4014be08ab7436814edf1fce0; retrieved 2026-09-22T20:16:12.453Z.