MIA06LA073 · Piper PA-28-180
Piper PA-28-180 · Accident
From X47 · Bunnell, FL to Ormond Beach Municipal Airport (KOMN)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA06LA073
- 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-28-180
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N2182T
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From X47 · Bunnell, FLTo Ormond Beach Municipal Airport (KOMN), Ormond Beach, 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
- Other
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, installation, improper
- Pilot in command › Aircraft preflight, 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 earlier that morning he flew to the Flagler County Airport, landed, and secured the engine. He then elected to return to the departure airport. He did not perform a preflight inspection of the airplane, and after starting the engine he taxied to and departed from runway 29. During the initial climb at approximately 1,500 feet he noted smoke coming from the engine compartment and the engine experienced a partial loss of power. He turned to return to the airport and the engine seized. He performed a forced landing on a dirt road and during the landing roll ran off the road and collided with a tree. Post accident examination of the engine by an FAA airworthiness inspector revealed an oil film inside the engine cowling and also on the right side of the fuselage from the engine cowling to midspan of the right wing. Additionally, damage to one of the cylinders was noted. The engine driven vacuum pump was found to have not been installed correctly with incorrect gasket material which was baffle gasket material and that the nuts that hold and seal the vacuum pump on were not torqued to proper specs and/or were missing all together and that there was oil on the rubber gaskets. The owner/pilot admitted to having worked along side with the IA to install the engine driven vacuum pump. The owner/pilot also stated that after they were finished installing the pump, he asked the IA if they had installed it correctly because it was sticking out more then he was used to. The IA reported having supervised the owner/pilot who did the work, then checked what he had done and signed it off. The engine had only 8 hours and was within a month of being overhauled at the time of the accident.
Probable cause
The failure of the pilot to perform a preflight inspection of the airplane resulting in departure with an inadequate oil supply, subsequent engine failure due to oil starvation, and damage to the airplane during a forced landing. Contributing to the accident was the improper installation of the engine-driven vacuum pump by a mechanic.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA06LA073
- Event ID
- 20060405X00393
- Case number
- MIA06LA073
- 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: beb56b95574dffff9821b783f66477c3c072046d2ae64dee4652c2fbba9c6c8a; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:02:35.333Z.