MIA93LA106 · Douglas DC-3C
Phoenix Air Douglas DC-3C · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during initial climb
From Zephyrhills Municipal Airport (ZPH) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA93LA106
- 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
Douglas DC-3C
- Aircraft type
- Douglas DC-3
- 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
- N8056
- Operator
- Phoenix Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Zephyrhills Municipal Airport (ZPH)To not recorded
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Airframe, component or system 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
- Pilot in command › Airspeed(vyse), not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PILOT STATED THAT ON INITIAL CLIMB, AT ABOUT 400 FT AGL, THE CREW SMELLED SOMETHING BURNING, FOLLOWED BY LIGHT SMOKE IN THE CABIN. BOTH ENGINES APPEARED NORMAL VISUALLY. THE ODOR AND SMOKE INCREASED, AND THE LEFT FIRE WARNING LIGHT ILLUMINATED. THE LEFT ENGINE WAS SHUT DOWN & THE PROP FEATHERED. THE PILOT INCREASED POWER ON THE RIGHT ENGINE; HOWEVER, THE AIRPLANE WOULD NOT CLIMB OR MAINTAIN AIRSPEED. A GEAR AND FLAPS UP FORCED LANDING WAS MADE INTO A FIELD. THE PILOT STATED THAT HE BELIEVED AN EXHAUST CLAMP BROKE ALLOWING A SEGMENT OF EXHAUST TO SCORCH COWLING AND ACTIVATE THE FIRE WARNING SYSTEM. EXAMINATION OF THE LEFT ENGINE REVEALED THAT THE LOWER FIRE DETECTION ELEMENTS WERE FUSED AND BROKEN FREE, AND THAT THE HYDRAULIC LINES WERE BURNED THROUGH.
Probable cause
THE PILOT-IN-COMMAND'S FAILURE TO MAINTAIN BEST SINGLE-ENGINE RATE-OF-CLIMB SPEED WHICH RESULTED IN A FORCED LANDING. A FACTOR WHICH CONTRIBUTED TO THE ACCIDENT WAS A POSSIBLE EXHAUST SYSTEM CLAMP FAILURE.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA93LA106
- Event ID
- 20001211X12199
- Case number
- MIA93LA106
- 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: eb1f0a68eab2caf006bb36fad929364eb247ad3f411ffe009e5e243fc689ca4b; retrieved 2026-09-23T02:10:38.841Z.