MIA99FA159 · Classic Aircraft Corp. S-51D
Classic Aircraft Corp. S-51D · Accident: airframe, component or system failure while maneuvering
From Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport (FXE) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA99FA159
- 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
Classic Aircraft Corp. S-51D
- Aircraft type
- Classic S-51
- 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
- N25VV
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport (FXE), FT. LAUDERDALE, FLTo 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
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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
- Stall/mush
- 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
- Fuel system › Vapor lock
- Landing gear › Malfunction
- Pilot in command › Airspeed, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On the morning of the accident the airplane had flown for about 1.2 hours, landed, was refueled, and shut down for a an unknown period of time. After start up the pilot taxied to the active runway, and was delayed in taking off by ATC, due to traffic. The time between engine start and takeoff was about 16 minutes. About 11 nautical miles west of the airport, the pilot radioed the control tower that he was having a problem raising the landing gear and he wanted to return to the airport. The pilot then radioed that he had lost the engine. Radar and radio contact was lost shortly thereafter. A witness heard the engine losing power, and sputtering. The witness also observed the airplane make a controlled descent towards the ground. On-site examination revealed that the approximately 10-foot-high brush, to the west of the ground impact site was bent towards the east, and the area of bent brush was about 20 feet in length. There were no ground scars to indicate that the airplane had any forward movement after impacting the soft ground. A test run of the engine was performed and revealed that when the engine was brought to cruise RPMs, and running for about 10 minutes, the fuel temperature reached 153 degrees F, which set up a vapor lock condition, the fuel pressure needle fluctuated, went to zero, and the engine completely shut down. The engine was allowed to cool and then started again. On the second run the fuel temperature reached 152 degrees F, the RPM and fuel pressure fluctuated, and the engine completely stopped, similar to the first run. A test on a similar airplane revealed that while cycling the landing gear, the wheels would pass in front of the radiator scoop. With the gear partially up, but not in the wheel well, the gear almost completely blocked the radiator scoop, which would have caused cooling air to be blocked or deflected.
Probable cause
A complete loss of engine power caused by the malfunctioning landing gear, which blocked the radiator scoop, leading to increased fuel temperature and the subsequent vapor lock condition and fuel blockage. A secondary cause was the pilot's failure to maintain flying speed resulting in the subsequent stall/mush
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA99FA159
- Event ID
- 20001212X18835
- Case number
- MIA99FA159
- 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: 4236322fe493eb26687c5be68835d602752cce08ae77d8f07fe7e6441c89f123; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:07:03.715Z.