MIA04CA055 · Aviat Pitts S2B
Aviat Pitts S2B · Accident: on ground/water collision with terrain/water during landing
From Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport (FXE) to Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport (FXE)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA04CA055
- 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
Aviat Pitts S2B
- Aircraft type
- Aviat PITTS S2B
- 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
- N61PS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport (FXE), Fort Lauderdale, FLTo Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport (FXE)
- 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 · landing roll
- 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
- On ground/water collision with terrain/water
- 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 › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
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 an earlier flight had occurred, and that fuel had been ordered, but it was not delivered and placed in the airplane's fuel tanks. He further stated that the refueling error was not detected during the preflight inspection. He said they departed from the Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport, and flew to the practice area to perform aerobatics, and as he rolled the airplane inverted, the engine hesitated. He said he immediately recognized that the airplane had not been refueled after the previous flight. Rather than fly over populated areas, the pilot said he elected to make a precautionary landing on a dirt road close to the practice area, and during the rollout the airplane veered to the left, off the dirt road and nosed over into a water filled canal, incurring damage.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight planning which resulted in an off-airport precautionary landing to preclude fuel exhaustion, which resulted in damage to the airplane during the landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA04CA055
- Event ID
- 20040330X00389
- Case number
- MIA04CA055
- 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: 0ca4808bf86ea048f89e15e800d173a8b9c0c86f83d96c0f73c8acfbf99563f2; retrieved 2026-09-22T07:53:59.346Z.