MIA99LA169 · Cessna 140
Cessna 140 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Air Acres Airport (5GA4) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA99LA169
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna 140
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 140
- 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
- N76390
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Air Acres Airport (5GA4)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
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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
- Fuel contamination; Fuel starvation; Tree(s)
- 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
- Fluid, fuel › Contamination
- Fluid, fuel › Starvation
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After takeoff the airplane's engine began to sputter, at an altitude of about 200 feet above the ground (agl), and corrective action by the pilot did not clear the problem. He elected to land in trees instead of straight ahead to avoid hitting wires. The pilot stated that the airplane 'had not flown in a week,' and during the preflight inspection of the airplane he drained the fuel tanks and said, '...some very small bits of junk ( about 3-4 < pin head size) were observed in [the] right tank containing 87 octane fuel. He drained about 1 1/2 pints until fuel ran clear. [The] engine was started on left tank (100 LL) which was full. Right tank noted 1/4 full....' The FAA inspector that examined the wreckage concluded that, '...after review of the aircraft records and extensive conversation with the pilot, it appeared that the aircraft...suffered some fuel contamination seeing how aircraft had been stored for awhile....'
Probable cause
a total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation because of contaminated fuel, resulting in a forced landing and subsequent impact with a tree.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA99LA169
- Event ID
- 20001212X19060
- Case number
- MIA99LA169
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1999-06-09.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 84ff3c92e7a85ddcc534725fb76dacb3583c3ec50d3868a4623cbd0db6ccb5d9; retrieved 2026-09-22T14:55:53.182Z.