MIA06LA026 · Cessna 152
Cessna 152 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Florida Keys Marathon International Airport (MTH) to X47 · Bunnell, FL
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA06LA026
- 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
Cessna 152
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 152
- 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
- N49815
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Florida Keys Marathon International Airport (MTH), Marathon, FLTo X47 · Bunnell, 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 pilot stated that he had been asked by the owner to ferry an airplane that had just been purchased, and further said that the airplane had been sitting in an area that had extensive flooding, which had occurred as a result of hurricanes that had affected the area. After conducting a preflight examination the pilot said he took off, and was in cruise flight at an altitude of 1,500 feet for about 15 minutes, when all of a sudden, without warning, the engine ceased operating. He said he was able to keep the engine operating through the use of the primer, but after a little while the engine ceased operating all together, and he ditched the airplane in the ocean. The pilot also said that he had experienced "several problems" with the FAA, and at the time of the accident flight, both his FAA private pilot certificate and his FAA airframe and powerplant mechanic certificate had been revoked. After recovery from the ocean an FAA inspector examined the airplane and it was to have extensive corrosion. The magnetos, carburetor and spark plugs had either been worn, severely fouled, or had corroded, and according to the inspector, due to the flooding, as well as the airplane having been ditched in the ocean, he was unable to determine its preaccident condition.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power for undetermined reasons that resulted in the airplane being ditched into the ocean. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's operation of an airplane with known deficiencies due to it having sat in flooded waters.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA06LA026
- Event ID
- 20051221X01998
- Case number
- MIA06LA026
- 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: 8ac6b5843407b3193d9d85a5a19091381cd54e1daf89adf06c20e3dd8b8af1a3; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:12:49.027Z.