MIA87LA164 · Cessna 402C
Aero Coach Aviation Int'L Cessna 402C · Accident: missing aircraft
From PBI · West Palm Beach, FL to Leonard M. Thompson International Airport (MYAM)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA87LA164
- 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
- Unknown
Cessna 402C
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 402
- 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
- N2652B
- Operator
- Aero Coach Aviation Int'L
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From PBI · West Palm Beach, FLTo Leonard M. Thompson International Airport (MYAM), Marsh Harbour
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
- Missing aircraft
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Not plotted · Location withheld: coordinates are missing, conflicting, invalid, or have no accepted acquisition method. No substitute location has been invented.
NTSB narrative
ON 5/27/87 AT ABOUT 0915 EDT, THE PLT DEPARTED PALM BEACH INTL ARPT (PBI) ON A FLT TO MARSH HARBOUR, GREAT ABACO ISLAND, BAHAMAS. WHEN THE ACFT DID NOT ARRIVE AT THE DESTINATION, A SEARCH WAS INITIATED. THE ACFT WAS NOT FND & WAS PRESUMED TO HAVE BEEN DESTROYED. THE PLT WAS PRESUMED TO HAVE BEEN FATALLY INJURED. RADAR DATA REVEALED THAT THE ACFT HAD DEPARTED TOWARD MARSH HARBOUR, BUT THE LAST CONTACT WITH THE FLT WAS APRX 12 MI EAST OF PBI. AN ACFT WAS SEEN FLYING EASTBOUND OVER THE DESTN ARPT AT ABOUT THE TIME OF THE ESTIMATED ARRIVAL TIME. ALSO, ANOTHER PLT THOUGHT SHE HEARD A RADIO TRANSMISSION FROM THE MISSING ACFT WHEN THE PLT RPRTD IN THE VCNTY OF GRAND BAHAMA ISLAND.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA87LA164
- Event ID
- 20001213X30991
- Case number
- MIA87LA164
- 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 UTC date the NTSB stores; the local time zone is not recorded, so the local date may differ by a day.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ec64afb1a47965e90138420958b2ca6474084c24cb442ba423bf5e8ff2f9533c; retrieved 2026-09-21T04:07:42.298Z.