MIA91MA100 · Piper PA-46-310P
Piper PA-46-310P · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From St. Petersburg Clearwater International Airport (PIE) to Laurence G Hanscom Field (BED)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA91MA100
- 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
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-46-310P
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-46
- 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
- N9112K
- Operator
- Donald M. Schreiber · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From St. Petersburg Clearwater International Airport (PIE), ST PETERSBURG, FLTo Laurence G Hanscom Field (BED), Bedford, MA
- 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 · 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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
- Flight/nav instruments, airspeed indicator › False indication
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Anti-ice/deice system, improper use of
- Pilot in command › Design stress limits of aircraft, exceeded
- Pitot/static system › Ice
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PLT WAS ON AN IFR FLT IN IMC & RCVD CLNC TO CLIMB & MAINT FL220. DRG CLIMB, HE INFORMED ARTCC, '. . . WE'RE HAVING A PROBLEM.' WHEN ASKED TO SAY AGAIN, HE BGN THE SAME REPLY, THEN NO FURTHER RDO COM WAS RCVD FM THE ACFT. SUBSEQUENTLY AN INFLT BREAKUP OCCURRED & WRECKAGE WAS SCATTERED OVR A WIDE AREA. THE RGT OUTBOARD WING PANEL, HRZNTL STABILIZER, ELEVATORS, RGT AILERON & PARTS OF THE RUDDER WERE FND AT A DSTC FM THE MAIN WRECKAGE. THESE DISPLAYED EVIDENCE OF OVERSTRESS FAILURE. NO PREEXISTING CRACKS OR FATIGUE WAS FND. RADAR & WX DATA SHOWED DEV FM NORMAL FLT BGN AT OR NR MDT CONVECTIVE WX ECHO (VIP 2) AS THE ACFT WAS CLIMBING THRU 17,300' IN FRZG CONDS. AT THAT TIME, THE RATE OF CLIMB WAS ABT 200'/MIN & THE GND SPD WAS 150 TO 160 KTS. AT 1032:18, A DSCNT BGN. DRG THE NEXT 2 TO 3 MIN, THE ACFT'S ALT, HDG & SPD DEVIATED. AT 1035:17, OTR PRIMARY RADAR TARGETS APPEARED, THEN RADAR CTC WAS LOST. GROSS WT OF THE ACFT WAS ESTD TO BE 4311 LBS; MAX ALLOWABLE WT WAS 4100 LBS. CG WAS ESTD TO BE 1.59 INCHES BHND THE AFT LMT. (SEE: NTSB/SIR-92/03)
Probable cause
THE PILOT'S FAILURE TO ACTIVATE THE PITOT HEAT BEFORE ASCENDING ABOVE THE FREEZING LEVEL IN INSTRUMENT METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS (IMC), FOLLOWED BY HIS IMPROPER RESPONSE TO ERRONEOUS AIRSPEED INDICATIONS THAT RESULTED FROM BLOCKAGE OF THE PITOT TUBE BY ATMOSPHERIC ICING. CONTRIBUTING TO THE ACCIDENT WAS: THE PILOT'S LACK OF CURRENCY IN FLYING IN IMC.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA91MA100
- Event ID
- 20001212X16670
- Case number
- MIA91MA100
- 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: d7d92f5b1741f993fcfb3c3e42b4b8ebd16c2f461c7f7d5c3c0b139378b56b2b; retrieved 2026-09-21T01:54:37.039Z.