MIA99LA033 · Cessna 152
Aircraft Developement Flight Cessna 152 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) while maneuvering
From Miami Executive Airport (TMB) to Palm Beach County Glades Airport (PHK)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA99LA033
- 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
- N65611
- Operator
- Aircraft Developement Flight
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Miami Executive Airport (TMB), Miami, FLTo Palm Beach County Glades Airport (PHK), Pahokee, 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
- Maneuvering
- 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 (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 exhaustion
- 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
- Pilot in command › Proper assistance, delayed
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Coral Springs, FL, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that the flight departed and after reaching his third to the last checkpoint, he could not located his next checkpoint. He orbited the area then became lost and about 3 hours 30 minutes after the flight departed, he contacted the Miami AFSS and advised he was lost, the right fuel tank and empty and the left fuel tank was low on fuel. He then flew away from the congested area expecting to perform a forced landing due to fuel exhaustion and after the engine quit due to fuel exhaustion, he landed the airplane on a dike. During the landing roll, the airplane rolled off the dike and collided with trees. The airplane had been operated for 3.8 hours since takeoff according to the hour meter. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that the fuel tanks were empty.
Probable cause
The delay by the pilot to obtain proper assistance after becoming lost/disoriented resulting in total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's lack of total experience.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA99LA033
- Event ID
- 20001211X11478
- Case number
- MIA99LA033
- 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: 4f7f62b8ed8180f760473dee0a2bac63a45b2f465bda0165b36b5f33034b9ed6; retrieved 2026-09-22T16:21:09.856Z.