MIA00LA263 · Grumman AA-5
Grumman AA-5 · Accident: partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure) during initial climb
From Zephyrhills Municipal Airport (ZPH) to Leesburg International Airport (LEE)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA00LA263
- 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
Grumman AA-5
- Aircraft type
- Grumman AA-5
- 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
- N7196L
- Operator
- Arthur L. Schaer · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Zephyrhills Municipal Airport (ZPH)To Leesburg International Airport (LEE), Leesburg, 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
- Initial climb
- 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 (mechanical 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
- Fuel starvation; 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Stall/mush, intentional
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Zephyrhills, FL, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The pilot noted the airplane was not climbing as expected and a decreased engine rpm. He checked the throttle and mixture controls then with obstructions ahead, intentionally stalled the airplane; a hard landing resulted. The mixture control arm was in the idle cutoff position and the mixture control cable was fractured aft of the mixture control arm. A bracket near the carburetor securing the mixture cable was displaced to the left 1.5 inches. The swivel assembly in the mixture control arm was installed upside down. Post accident, the engine was operated to 2,300 rpm. Both ends of the flame tube of the muffler were found separated following the engine run. One of the flame tube ends was impact damaged; portions of the fracture surfaces on both flame tube ends had a relatively shiny appearance. Wear and fatigue noted on the mixture control cable adjacent to the fracture area; bending overstress to the right on the remaining fracture surface. The mixture control cable had not been replaced since airplane manufacture in 1974. The airplane had accumulated 2,246 hours since then, 44 hours since the last annual inspection 11 months earlier, and 408 hours since an overhauled muffler was installed.
Probable cause
the intentional stall/mush by the pilot-in-command due to obstructions ahead resulting in a hard landing. Contributing to the accident was the partial loss of engine power due to fuel starvation caused by wear, fatigue, then overstress separation of the mixture control cable resulting in the mixture control arm moving to the idle cutoff position.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA00LA263
- Event ID
- 20001212X22036
- Case number
- MIA00LA263
- 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: 4dc82947cd773a867d565b8f59d92367db7e5ed945a9a10aea5a3ae334e29d44; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:05:08.164Z.