Caribbean Air Carrier Piper PA-23-250 accident
Piper PA-23-250 · Accident: fire en route
From an unrecorded airport to X95 · Fajardo, PR
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA92LA143
- 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
- 4 · 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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
- N59LD
- Operator
- Caribbean Air Carrier
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo X95 · Fajardo, PR
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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 · climb to 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
- Fire
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Not plotted · Location withheld: coordinates are missing, conflicting, invalid, or have no accepted acquisition method. No substitute location has been invented.
NTSB narrative
SHORTLY AFTER TAKEOFF, THE PLT CONTACTED THE TOWER & ADVISED OF AN ENGINE FIRE. THE FLT WAS CLEARED TO RETURN BUT THE ACFT CRASHED APRX 5 MILES WEST OF THE ARPT. THE ACFT WAS RECOVERED SEVERAL DAYS AFTER THE ACCIDENT & EXAMINATION REVEALED THAT THE FIRE WAS NEAR THE LEFT ENGINE AREA. THE LEFT ENGINE WAS NOT RECOVERED. ON APRIL 29, 1992, THE LEFT ENGINE FUEL SERVO WAS REMOVED & AN OVERHAULED UNIT WAS INSTALLED. THERE WERE NO FURTHER ENTRIES IN THE LEFT ENGINE LOGBOOK. NO DETERMINATION COULD BE MADE AS TO THE REASON FOR THE FIRE OR THE ORIGIN.
Probable cause
IN-FLIGHT FIRE FOR UNDETERMINED REASONS, AND IN-FLIGHT COLLISION WITH THE WATER.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA92LA143
- Event ID
- 20001211X14939
- Case number
- MIA92LA143
- 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: 9be5cbd08b5dcd430760d447101f92fb0e57381d9c38cc0804d49ddbfeecc813; retrieved 2026-09-18T13:57:46.338Z.