MIA99LA032 · Cessna 152
Dean International Cessna 152 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Miami Executive Airport (TMB) to PBI · West Palm Beach, FL
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA99LA032
- 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
- N48013
- Operator
- Dean International
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Miami Executive Airport (TMB)To PBI · West Palm 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
- Engine assembly, connecting rod › Failure, total
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Shortly after takeoff the pilot heard a sound then felt a vibration. She advised Air Traffic Control of the situation while turning to return, but the engine experienced a loss of power. She then maneuvered the airplane for a forced landing to a school field, and landed downwind farther than anticipated. The airplane bounced, and while airborne, collided with a fence, then collided with another fence and came to rest with the fuselage nearly vertical. Examination of the engine revealed sufficient quantity of engine oil. The cylinder walls of Nos. 1 and 3 cylinders were noted to be dry when the engine was examined 6 days later, and the No. 3 cylinder connecting rod was broken. No evidence of lack of lubrication was noted on the crankshaft journals. The No. 3 main bearing was noted to be extruded when examined. Examination of the recovered connecting rod components by the NTSB Metallurgical Laboratory revealed overstress failure to the components that did not exhibit mechanical damage to fracture surfaces. The thickness of a recovered bearing shell fragment was measured to be .019 to .022 inch; the specified thickness of the connecting rod bearing steel back is .056 to .066 inch.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power due to a connecting rod failure for undetermined reasons. Contributing to the accident was the unsuitable terrain encountered during the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA99LA032
- Event ID
- 20001211X11477
- Case number
- MIA99LA032
- 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: 60a01c0ebdc7d17491d625dbefd9f29f25a4a8256c47af61effa65f632bf6a6a; retrieved 2026-09-22T16:20:54.392Z.