MIA93FA009 · Cessna 152
Suncoast Flying Services Cessna 152 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water en route
From St. Petersburg Clearwater International Airport (PIE) to Clearwater Air Park (CLW)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA93FA009
- 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
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
- N757SM
- Operator
- Suncoast Flying Services
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From St. Petersburg Clearwater International Airport (PIE), St. Petersburg, FLTo Clearwater Air Park (CLW)
- 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 · descent
- 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
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE COMMERCIAL PILOT DEPARTED ON A VFR FLIGHT IN VFR FLIGHT CONDITIONS. WITNESSES OBSERVED THE AIRPLANE TRAVELING TO THE SOUTH ESTIMATED BETWEEN 250 TO 1,000 FEET AGL IN STRAIGHT AND LEVEL FLIGHT. THE AIRPLANE WAS OBSERVED TO START A TURN TO THE RIGHT AND AN INCREASE IN ENGINE POWER WAS HEARD. THE WITNESSES LOOKED UP AND OBSERVED THE AIRPLANE IN A NOSE DOWN ATTITUDE UNTIL IT DISAPPEARED BELOW THE TREE LINE. EXAMINATION OF THE AIRFRAME, FLIGHT CONTROL SYSTEM, ENGINE ASSEMBLY AND ACCESSORIES REVEALED NO EVIDENCE TO INDICATE A PRECRASH FAILURE OR MALFUNCTION. THE PILOT WAS UNDER INVESTIGATION BY THE CLEARWATER POLICE DEPARTMENT FOR SEXUAL BATTERY THAT ALLEGEDLY OCCURRED THE NIGHT BEFORE THE ACCIDENT.
Probable cause
LOSS OF CONTROL INFLIGHT BY THE PILOT FOR UNDETERMINED REASONS.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA93FA009
- Event ID
- 20001211X15910
- Case number
- MIA93FA009
- 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: 82e2c25c79289fb5dcd0c7efbb4e29f28b0db1462c59015f44b58451acb267e7; retrieved 2026-09-21T00:51:00.076Z.