MIA01LA048 · Piper PA-28R-201
Piper PA-28R-201 · Accident: loss of engine power during initial climb
From Treasure Coast International Airport (FPR) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA01LA048
- 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-201
- 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
- N9185P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Treasure Coast International Airport (FPR)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
- Loss of engine power
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Minor
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Go-around, initiated
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, improper
- Pilot in command › Planned approach, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that when he turned off the electric fuel boost pump after takeoff, the engine lost about 300 rpm. He turned the electric pump back on and the engine regained power. While turning on final approach for landing he lined up with the wrong runway and made a go-around. During the go-around, the engine popped and went to idle power. He was unable to return to the airport and landed in a field. During landing rollout, the nose landing gear collapsed and he hit his head when the shoulder harness did not lock. The airplane received minor damage in the accident and the pilot was hospitalized for a head injury. Postcrash running of the engine showed no evidence of failure or malfunction with the electric boost pump on or off. The pilot's shoulder harness was found stowed after the accident and it locked normally during pull tests. The pilot was under a court order dated June 4, 1998, to not operate aircraft, and was scheduled to surrender to authorities in the State of Connecticut to begin serving a prison sentence on the day of the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper approach for landing while making a landing following a reported momentary partial loss of engine power for undetermined reasons and his decision to make a go-around from the approach resulting in a landing in a field and collapse of the nose landing gear following a reported total loss of engine power for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA01LA048
- Event ID
- 20001228X45498
- Case number
- MIA01LA048
- 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: 6b47f50c1670468874b5ec2a865b8e83298f917ba20c69519739928369cd7473; retrieved 2026-09-21T10:17:34.067Z.