MIA97LA192 · Unknown KOLB FIRESTAR II KOLB FIRES
Unknown KOLB FIRESTAR II KOLB FIRES · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From No airport to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA97LA192
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Unknown KOLB FIRESTAR II KOLB FIRES
- 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
- UNREG
- Operator
- Richard J. Clarke · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From No airportTo 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
- Maneuvering · turn to reverse direction
- 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 control in flight
- 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
- Stall
- 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 › Stall, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After takeoff while performing touch-and-go water landings about 500 feet above ground level, during a right bank, the engine was heard to backfire by a witness then the airplane was observed to pitch nose down and descend into the lake. The airplane came to rest inverted and the pilot was recovered by bystanders. The airplane was also recovered by bystanders and examination of the airframe and flight controls by an FAA airworthiness inspector revealed no preimpact failure or malfunction. The engine which separated from the airplane was also recovered but was not disassembled. Toxicological analysis was negative for all tested drugs. The pilot had reportedly only flown the accident airplane on about 5 flights for a total flight time of about 8 hours. He was advised by a pilot friend that the airplane would stall at higher airspeeds with the floats installed.
Probable cause
Inadvertent stall by the pilot while turning from the upwind to the crosswind leg. Contributing to the accident was the pilots lack of total experience in the make and model airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA97LA192
- Event ID
- 20001208X08197
- Case number
- MIA97LA192
- 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: 001062edb7a670cd2129b84a0d938b5484915f7792bdf5b055be65ad5ae537d0; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:55:12.693Z.