MIA97FA217 · Gulfstream American AA-5B
Gulfstream American AA-5B · Accident: partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during initial climb
From Naples Municipal Airport (APF) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA97FA217
- 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
Gulfstream American AA-5B
- Aircraft type
- Gulfstream American AA-5
- 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
- N28246
- Operator
- Mile High Advertising
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Naples Municipal Airport (APF)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
- 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
- Partial 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 contamination; 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
- Company maintenance personnel › Maintenance, replacement, inadequate
- Flightcrew › Aircraft preflight, inadequate
- Flightcrew › Planning/decision, improper
- Fluid, fuel › Contamination, water
- Fuel system, cap › Leak
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The aircraft had a history of fuel caps leaking water into the fuel tanks, and repairs had been attempted. About 3 to 4 inches of rain had fallen since the aircraft was refueled about two days before the accident. Water was found in the fuel tanks during the preflight inspection. After takeoff the engine lost power, and the pilots decided to return to the airport. The second pilot stated the pilot-in-command was flying the aircraft, and after reversing course, the stall horn activated. Subsequently, the aircraft crashed on a road after clearing a building, a 25 foot sign, and a 25 foot palm tree. Postcrash examination showed the engine fuel system contained water contamination; there was no evidence of engine mechanical failure or malfunction. The left and right fuel tank caps were found to leak water into the tanks during postcrash tests. The pilot-in-command's logbook showed he last flew 11 months before the accident.
Probable cause
leaking fuel cap(s), due to inadequate maintenance/repair, which resulted in water contamination of the fuel; inadequate preflight by the flight crew; and improper planning/decision by the flight crew. Factors relating to the accident were: high obstructions in the emergency landing area, and the pilot-in-command's lack of recent flying experience.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA97FA217
- Event ID
- 20001208X08454
- Case number
- MIA97FA217
- 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: 5e7e62ffcef14c63e55b78354a7a2d3b03268d0a322e2172fe27ee35aa6ea02c; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:53:12.954Z.