MIA02LA061 · Smith, Ted Aerostar 601P
Smith, Ted Aerostar 601P · Accident: in flight encounter with weather while maneuvering
From Boca Raton Airport (BCT) to Florida Keys Marathon International Airport (MTH)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA02LA061
- 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
Smith, Ted Aerostar 601P
- Aircraft type
- Smith Ted Aerostar 601
- 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
- N715RM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Boca Raton Airport (BCT), Boca Raton, FLTo Florida Keys Marathon International Airport (MTH), Marathon, 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- In flight encounter with weather
- 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 › Flight into known adverse weather, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was aware of thunderstorms along his route of flight. He paralleled a line of storms for about 20 minutes looking for a hole in the storms to penetrate, without any success. He turned, and climbed to an altitude of 13,500 feet. He noticed what seemed to be an opening to the south, and turned southbound, through the hole, for about 2 or 3 miles, and then the hole closed. He turned the airplane to the right to reverse course, when he inadvertantly penetrated a cell. At this point he said he "lost control of the airplane, and was turned upside down…...heading straight down towards the ground...…traveling at a high rate of speed..….the airspeed indicator was pegged." At an altitude of about 2,000 feet, he was able to level the wings, reduce power and raise the nose. He said he was then able to slow the airplane for a "controlled crash landing," straight a head in a sugar cane field. According to the Sheriff's Report, he struck the field in which the aircraft was lying in immediately after slowing the airplane. The distance from the initial impact area to where the airplane came to rest was about 75 yards.
Probable cause
the pilot continued flight into known adverse weather resulting in a loss of control and subsequent impact with the ground.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA02LA061
- Event ID
- 20020221X00239
- Case number
- MIA02LA061
- 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: e87cb95ee301f43501b6365009b10f8543843d0a46bcc246f602babe1c9f70a0; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:41:52.716Z.