ATL01LA014 · Piper PA-28R-180
Piper PA-28R-180 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during initial climb
From Merritt Island Airport (COI) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL01LA014
- 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
Piper PA-28R-180
- 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
- N4914J
- Operator
- Vincent T. Vorsino · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Merritt Island Airport (COI)To not recorded
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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
- Airframe › Separation
- Miscellaneous, bolt/nut/fastener/clamp/spring › Failure
- Miscellaneous, bolt/nut/fastener/clamp/spring › Not secured
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, service of aircraft/equipment, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, this was his second flight of the day. He taxied to runway 29 and departed to the west. He said he noted nothing out of the ordinary on takeoff or climb out until reaching about 500 feet when the engine cowling separated from the airplane. The cowling broke off a piece of the right windscreen, spun off and hit the baggage door and finally collided with the stabilator. Examination of the upper cowling revealed that three of the four fastener assembly studs were missing. A review of the airplane maintenance logs revealed that the cowling had been removed to service the hydraulic brakes on November 17, 2000 about 7 flight hours before the mishap.
Probable cause
Maintenance personnel failure to properly install engine cowling fasteners, which allowed the engine cowling to separate in flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL01LA014
- Event ID
- 20001218X45433
- Case number
- ATL01LA014
- 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: 703978d10b4774042e69375b738812b91593b53b557cbddbdcd6ee7cd1616093; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:18:36.274Z.