MIA02LA019 · Piper PA-28-181
Piper PA-28-181 · Accident: loss of engine power during initial climb
From Deland Municipal Sidney H Taylor Field (DED) to Merritt Island Airport (COI)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA02LA019
- 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-28-181
- 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
- N85TT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Deland Municipal Sidney H Taylor Field (DED), Deland, FLTo Merritt Island Airport (COI), Merrit Island, 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
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that he was departing on runway 5, and was at an altitude of about 200 feet when the engine suddenly ceased operating for a short period of time. The pilot further stated that the engine suddenly restarted automatically, and then ceased operating again for a second time. He said the engine did not "spit or sputter", but that both times it ceased operating, it happened suddenly and completely. The aircraft crashed in a wooded area, about 800 yards east of the airport, incurring substantial damage. An FAA licensed mechanic, with inspection authorization, conducted a detailed postaccident examination, and also tested the accident aircraft engine on a test cell, and no anomalies were noted.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power during takeoff/initial climb due to undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA02LA019
- Event ID
- 20011121X02279
- Case number
- MIA02LA019
- 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 2001-11-19.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 912314fb6cf3bd78b4502578bef201044be034d8f5bf7c8c67341242c36f10d7; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:48:54.044Z.