MIA98LA140 · Piper PA-46-310P
Piper PA-46-310P · Accident: partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Vero Beach Regional Airport (VRB) to 73J
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA98LA140
- 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-46-310P
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-46
- 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
- N77DE
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Vero Beach Regional Airport (VRB), Vero Beach, FLTo 73J
- 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
- Partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On the third leg of a cross country flight, while flying about 1,000 feet msl, near the destination airport, the pilot reported that the engine rpm's began to audibly fluctuate, and the engine then quit. Emergency procedures to restore engine power were unsuccessful. The flight was vectored toward the destination airport and while flying perpendicular to the runway, the airplane impacted the ground just short of the runway edge, rolled across the runway into a marsh, and came to rest upright with the right wing separated. Adequate fuel was drained from the left wing fuel tank. While still installed on the airplane, the engine was started and found to operate normally. No preimpact malfunction was noted to the fuel delivery or fuel vent system. Fuel consumption calculations based on the flight times, reported fuel flow for each leg, and altitudes flown, revealed that the estimated fuel consumed was about 86 gallons. The total usable fuel capacity is 120 gallons.
Probable cause
The partial loss of engine power for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA98LA140
- Event ID
- 20001211X09924
- Case number
- MIA98LA140
- 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: c6890d9f038590c2619e50b6b538420b0d6f8b39999fa7c02039b5b2fb5560af; retrieved 2026-09-22T17:52:17.720Z.