MIA98LA034 · Cessna 152
Philair Flight Center Cessna 152 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Gainesville Regional Airport (GNV) to Daytona Beach International Airport (DAB)
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
- MIA98LA034
- 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
Cessna 152
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 152
- 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
- N68327
- Operator
- Philair Flight Center
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Possible conflict
- From Gainesville Regional Airport (GNV), Gainesville, FLTo Daytona Beach International Airport (DAB), Daytona Beach, 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
- En route · cruise
- 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 (mechanical failure)
- 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
- Fluid, oil › Exhaustion
- Lubricating system, oil filler cap › Not secured
- Pilot in command › Aircraft preflight, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot had trouble screwing closed the oilcap/dipstick during his preflight walk-around inspection, and returned to the flight school for help. He did not wait for the help he sought, and instead, returned to the airplane and departed on the first leg of his solo cross-country. On the return leg, he experienced an engine failure that forced his crash landing into a swamp area. Examination of the wreckage revealed almost total loss of engine oil out the oil breather and resultant engine seizure.
Probable cause
the student pilot's failure to properly secure the oilcap/dipstick within it's integral oil filler tube during his preflight inspection.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA98LA034
- Event ID
- 20001208X09230
- Case number
- MIA98LA034
- 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: 2adb6b33a565a99b7fd190625dc63b5dbd4e9bbe2f4494dbc36ca450e0df7115; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:05:06.166Z.