MIA04FA119 · Cessna U206B
Cessna U206B · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Florida Keys Marathon International Airport (MTH) to Key West International Airport (EYW)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA04FA119
- 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
- 1 · 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
Cessna U206B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 206
- 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
- N3800G
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Florida Keys Marathon International Airport (MTH), Marathon, FLTo Key West International Airport (EYW), Key West, 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
- En route · cruise
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airline transport certificated pilot was flying passengers and a cameraman associated with a film production to film a fort on an island. During the filming, the pilot stated he switched fuel tanks, and noted that the left tank was full, and the right tank about 3/4 full. As the airplane approached the fort, the engine sputtered, and then regained full power. A minute or two later, the pilot indicated the engine lost all power, and after unsuccessfully trying to restart it, he ditched the airplane. The pilot and passengers were all able to exit the airplane except the cameraman, who tied himself to the seat with a rope prior to takeoff after the cargo door had been removed to facilitate filming. Attempts to free the cameraman prior to the airplane sinking were unsuccessful, and he drowned. A passenger noted that the right fuel tank fuel gauge was somewhere around the 1/4 mark, and bouncing as the airplane flew. Postaccident inspection of the airplane, recovered 17 days later from ocean waters, disclosed no evidence of any preimpact mechanical malfunction.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power for an undetermined reason during cruise flight, which resulted in the pilot ditching the airplane in ocean waters.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA04FA119
- Event ID
- 20040820X01262
- Case number
- MIA04FA119
- 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: 10f8deed68db27105d749e7ceecb13d3e5f923e075f8abc58c1488fd0a4689a2; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:22:39.408Z.