MIA98FA155 · Piper PA-23-250
Piper PA-23-250 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water during takeoff
From Fargo Airport (GA25) to X31 · Crystal River, FL
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA98FA155
- 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
Piper PA-23-250
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-23
- 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
- N4BN
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fargo Airport (GA25)To X31 · Crystal River, 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
- Takeoff · roll/run
- 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
- In flight collision with terrain/water
- 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
- Tree(s)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Propeller system/accessories, blade › Blade strike
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Witnesses observed the airplane start its takeoff roll on a heading of 150 degrees, on a grass runway 2,200 feet long. About 800 feet from the start of the takeoff roll the airplane became airborne about 8 feet off the ground, then went nose and left wing low into the runway where the left propeller struck the grass surface. Twenty propeller slash marks were found in the grass surface at the point in the runway were the witnesses saw the propeller strike the ground. The airplane then took off, climbed about 50 feet above the ground, turned left, struck trees, impacted the ground and caught fire. According to a witnesses, the airplane had taxied to the takeoff point and the pilot did an engine run up. At this point the witness said, '...[the] aircraft's engine seemed to sputter (one), he took off from the [north] end. The aircraft took off, but didn't seem to climb. The aircraft settled back down, propeller started hitting [the] ground, then aircraft got airborne again, made it over oak tree (note cross wind from pilot's right side). Struck pine tree and [I] saw fire ball.' Witnesses described the winds as gusty and a direct crosswind from the right side of the runway to the left side, with occasional shifts in the wind from the northwest. The reported winds about 40 miles west of the crash site were: winds from 220 degrees at 14 knots. Both engines were partially disassembled and no discrepancies were found. Examination of runway 15 revealed 20 propeller slash marks were found on the left side of the runway, on a heading of 150 degrees, and were measured at a total distance of 453 feet, 3 inches. The distances between the first and second slash marks was 2 feet. The distances between last two slash marks was 61 feet. It was determined that the ground speed of the airplane between the first slash mark and the second slash mark was 101.9 miles per hour.
Probable cause
the left engine propeller blades struck the runway surface during takeoff, resulting in the pilot losing control of the airplane, and subsequently impacting with trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA98FA155
- Event ID
- 20001211X10147
- Case number
- MIA98FA155
- 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: 24bc8c3074c6a9046a62503416393c5b3e08e009bccadeba11b1e2e4099b7e4a; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:36:06.241Z.