MIA01LA079 · Piper PA-32-300
Piper PA-32-300 · Accident: fire while taxiing
From Lakeland Linder International Airport (LAL) to Vero Beach Regional Airport (VRB)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA01LA079
- 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
- Unknown
- 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-32-300
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N15635
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lakeland Linder International Airport (LAL), Lakeland, FLTo Vero Beach Regional Airport (VRB), Vero Beach, 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
- Taxi
- 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
- Fire
- 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
- Pilot in command › Operation with known deficiencies in equipment, continued
- Pilot in command › Parking brakes, not removed
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that as he taxied for takeoff, the left brake grabbed. Upon reaching the end of the runway, the left brake was still grabbing and he elected to return to the maintenance company where he had picked up the airplane. During taxi back to the maintenance company the brakes failed and he continued to taxi using the "emergency brake." As he approached the ramp, he smelled smoke and shutdown the engine. A tire blew out and as he exited the airplane, the other tire blew out. He saw both main landing gear tires were on fire. Personnel from the maintenance company extinguished the fire. A mechanic stated that when he looked in the airplane after the accident, the parking brake was pulled on about 3/4. The mechanic stated that when he disassembled the brakes after the accident, he found no discrepancies that would have caused the brakes to drag.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to disengage the parking brake prior to taxi and his failure to stop and investigate the brakes when they malfunctioned during taxi for takeoff resulting in the wheel brakes heating and starting the tires on fire.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA01LA079
- Event ID
- 20010222X00498
- Case number
- MIA01LA079
- 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, coordinates. 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: 347f0ab2291e5364cd9b0df303402c589c91ac20f14ff8ecb98352c430c963cf; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:09:40.594Z.