MIA99LA171 · Cessna 182P
Cessna 182P · Accident: partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical) on approach
From Palm Beach County Park Airport (LNA) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA99LA171
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Cessna 182P
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- N1578M
- Operator
- Valerie E. Eikenberg · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Palm Beach County Park Airport (LNA)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
- Approach · VFR pattern downwind
- 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
- Partial 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; Wire, transmission
- 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
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that when checking the left wing fuel tank during preflight, she noted water. After obtaining a second sample, '...the fuel ran clear and I was satisfied that it had been eliminated.' She performed an engine run-up before takeoff with no discrepancies noted. The flight departed and while on the downwind leg, the engine sputtered. She turned base then onto short final and with the flaps fully extended, she did not want to land long and applied full power to go-around; the engine responded. She initiated a climb retracting the flaps in increments and when about 300 feet above ground level, the engine quit. She initiated a descent for a forced landing to an open field and after recognizing that she was unable to land there, continued to descend colliding with a power line, a house and the ground. Postaccident examination of the airplane by an FAA inspector revealed that the gascolator and carburetor contained water; approximately 110 milliliters of water was drained from the carburetor bowl. Additionally, both wing fuel cap seals were noted to be serviceable. Testing of the water drained from the carburetor revealed it to contain free chlorine and sodium chloride.
Probable cause
The poor in-flight planning by the pilot during the approach for a precautionary landing following a power interruption during the downwind leg, resulting in a go-around. A Contributing factor to the accident was the total loss of engine power during the go-around due to water contamination.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA99LA171
- Event ID
- 20001212X19062
- Case number
- MIA99LA171
- 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: 43113b62a6ae1077e30f4a5a4e6f96d2a26a193746c1dcca7c21807d1ffc4a70; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:30:54.965Z.