MIA00LA025 · Frederick ROCKET II
Frederick ROCKET II · Accident: loss of engine power while maneuvering
From Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport (FLL) to Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport (FXE)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA00LA025
- 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
Frederick ROCKET II
- Aircraft type
- Frederick ROCKET
- 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
- N561L
- Operator
- William G. Wood · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport (FLL), Fort Lauderdale, FLTo Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport (FXE), Fort Lauderdale, FL
- 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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 starvation; Stall
- 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
- Pilot in command › Airspeed(vso), not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was maneuvering the airplane between 250 and 300 feet when the airplane experienced a total loss of engine power. The pilot pulled back on the control stick to gain altitude. The nose pitched down ward about 45 degrees, the left wing dropped down, and the airplane collided with the everglades. The engine was removed from the airframe and transported to an authorized FAA approved repair station. The engine was placed in a test cell, started, developed rated power, and achieved takeoff power. The Electronics International Inc., FL-2R (fuel quantity indicator) was removed from the airplane and examined in the presence of the FAA. Information retrieved from the computer revealed the right fuel tank stopped using fuel about 50 minutes before the accident, and the left fuel tank would of been emptied at the time of the accident. The fuel selector valve was found selected on the left fuel tank. Toxicology results revealed the pilot was using a sedating prescription antidepressant drug.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain airspeed while maneuvering (VSO) resulting in an inadvertent stall and subsequent in-flight collision with water. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's improper fuel management resulting in a total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation, and the pilot's use of a sedating prescription antidepressant drug.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA00LA025
- Event ID
- 20001212X20140
- Case number
- MIA00LA025
- 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: a474ab61bab972db02827511c0a2ee34fea1057cb9b2875d5dc1e1b7b23aadb9; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:38:22.062Z.