MIA85LA249 · Piper PA-28-160
Piper PA-28-160 · Accident: missing aircraft
From Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport (FLL) to Key West International Airport (EYW)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA85LA249
- 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
- 2 · 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
Piper PA-28-160
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N5488W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport (FLL), FT.LAUDERDALE, FLTo Key West International Airport (EYW), Key West, 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
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE ACFT FAILED TO ARRIVE AT ITS INTENDED DESTINATION ON A FLT PLAN FROM FT. LAUDERDALE FL. TO KEY WEST FL. NAVY KEY WEST APCH WAS PROVIDING VFR FLT FOLLOWING, RADAR & RADIOCONTACT WAS LOST WITH THE ACFT 20 NE OF KEY WEST. THE WHEREABOUTS OF THE OCCUPANTS ARE UNKNOWN & THEY ARE PRESUMED FATAL. THE ACFT IS MISSING & THE DAMAGE INDEX IS PRESUMED TO BE DESTROYED.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA85LA249
- Event ID
- 20001214X37844
- Case number
- MIA85LA249
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1985-09-09.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 21fc9f5fd670959c8de2705538cdb67acd5fa018444633d89e47239bf0d2a724; retrieved 2026-09-21T04:51:10.984Z.