MIA04CA006 · Piper PA-32-300
Piper PA-32-300 · Accident: undershoot during landing
From Everglades Airpark (X01) to Everglades Airpark (X01)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA04CA006
- 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
- N198GM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Everglades Airpark (X01), Everglades City, FLTo Everglades Airpark (X01)
- 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Undershoot
- 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 › Proper glidepath, not maintained
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 he had just taken off when the forward baggage compartment opened, and he entered the traffic pattern to land at the same airport he had just departed from. He said the approach was normal, but while on short final the descent rate increased, and the main landing gear contacted the ground about 5 feet short of the runway. He said the airplane then bounced on the runway surface, and it continued about 1,200 feet down the centerline of the runway before the left main landing gear separated from the airplane. The airplane then departed to the left side of the runway and into the grass. He also said that prior to the accident there were no mechanical failures or malfunctions to the airplane or any of its systems.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain the proper glide path during the approach to land, which resulted in him undershooting the runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA04CA006
- Event ID
- 20031203X01986
- Case number
- MIA04CA006
- 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: 619d0f22a3e4627eab862ea091777c95863fa5192f9ea3a9a44290a670dfce71; retrieved 2026-09-22T08:18:48.950Z.