MIA89MA023 · Rockwell 1121A
Rockwell 1121A · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Allegheny County Airport (AGC) to Arnold Palmer Regional Airport (LBE)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA89MA023
- 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
- 3 · 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
Rockwell 1121A
- Aircraft type
- Rockwell 1121
- 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
- N44
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Allegheny County Airport (AGC), Pittsburgh, PATo Arnold Palmer Regional Airport (LBE), Latrobe, PA
- 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 · holding (IFR)
- 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
- In flight encounter with weather
- 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
- Compressor assembly, blade › Foreign object damage
- Pilot in command › Ice/frost removal from aircraft, delayed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
ACFT ENTERED AN AREA OF FCST MOD ICING. ICE DETECTION SYS HAD BEEN INTRMTLY INOP. THE ACFT ENTERED HOLDING IN ICING CONDWHILE CKG FLT INSP EQUIP. EVIDENCE INDICATED CREW NOTED ICE ACCRETION, ACTIVATED SURFACE DE-ICE SYS, ICE BROKE LOOSE ANDENTERED ENG INTAKES. BOTH ENGS FLAMED OUT. DRG EMERG DESCENT CREW INIT RE-STARTS, BUT NEITHER ENG WOULD SUSTAIN PWR. CREW RQSTD VECTORS TO MORE DISTANT AIRPORT. BOTH PLTS WERE SEEN DRINKING PREV NIGHT. C/P HAD RECENTLY LOST DRIVERS LICENSE FOR DUI. CAPT HAD DECIDED TO RETIRE THAT DAY. C/P HAD WORKED IN FLT OPS 3 DAYS IN 8 WKS AND HAD LMTD TRNG IN FLTINSPECTION. BOTH PLTS HAD PERSONAL STRESSES WHICH MAY HAVE INFLUENCED PERFORMANCE. CAPT'S CONTAMINATED THORACIC BLOOD REVEALED 0.057% ALCOHOL. PUTRIFICATION WOULD ACCT FOR PART OF ALCOHOL LEVEL. C/P HAD TRACE ALCOHOL IN URINE ONLY. BOTH ENGS SHOWED COMPRESSOR FOD CONSISTENT WITH ICE INGESTION. NO OTHER ACFT SYS OR ENG MALFUNCTION FOUND.
Probable cause
FAILURE OF THE PILOT IN COMMAND TO OBSERVE THE RAPID ACCRETION OF ICE ON THE AIRPLANE DUE TO HIS ATTENTION BEING DIVERTED.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA89MA023
- Event ID
- 20001213X27313
- Case number
- MIA89MA023
- 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: 0776c3d6d660bd6b03459a85e1da447a202da2bf368f6598f9960e101f20225f; retrieved 2026-09-21T03:30:00.897Z.