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MIA05LA013 · Piper PA-23-250

25 Oct 2004 · San Juan, PR, United States

Premier Airways Piper PA-23-250 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach

From Henry E. Rohlsen Airport (TISX) to Fernando Luis Ribas Dominicci Airport (TJIG)

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Event

NTSB case
MIA05LA013
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-23-250

Aircraft type
Piper PA-23
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
N62711
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Henry E. Rohlsen Airport (TISX), St. CroixTo Fernando Luis Ribas Dominicci Airport (TJIG), Isla Grande, PR
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
Approach · VFR pattern base
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 control in flight
Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
Stall/mush
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 › Airspeed(vs), 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, on the downwind leg, the air traffic controller (ATC) instructed him to extend the downwind for 2 miles from the airport for traffic. Shortly after, ATC instructed him to fly straight to the runway for a short approach from the Capital building and to expedite due to inbound traffic at that time. The pilot questioned ATC about the short final instructions because of the ships at the port in close proximity to the approach. The pilot stated, "On short final the aircraft had no control" and he applied full power to the engines; however, the airplane impacted on the runway, left wing first. A witness positioned about 1,000 feet from the approach end of runway 9, stated he observed the accident airplane over the inside pattern turning on a left turn for a short final approach for runway 9. The airplane continued to descend without any indication of recovery. He heard the engine speeding up before the left wing tip hit the surface and bounced back to the right hitting the nose and the right main gear, at this point both main landing gear separated. The airplane slid backwards for about 300 feet on the runway before coming to a stop. The six people onboard exited the airplane without assistance and appeared to have no injuries. An FAA Aviation Safety Inspector that conducted the post-accident examination to the accident airplane's flight controls stated that continuity of the flight controls was established and the accident airplane's flight control systems were determined to be in operational condition. Runway 9 at Fernando Luis Ribas Dominicci Airport, is a published 100-foot wide by 5,317 foot long runway.

Probable cause

The pilot-in-command's failure to maintain airspeed while on base to final leg, which resulted in an inadvertent stall/mush and subsequent impact with the runway.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record MIA05LA013
Event ID
20041105X01769
Case number
MIA05LA013
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: 21bf8f305ea10bfed6352a3a1b8cbbd7e99034faa87bb6fc6a1d5f3435a0ceca; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:34:40.816Z.