MIA06FA092 · Piper PA-32-260
Piper PA-32-260 · Accident: loss of engine power during initial climb
From Dunnellon Marion Co & Park of Commerce Airport (X35) to Crystal River Airport (CGC)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA06FA092
- 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-32-260
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N592PR
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dunnellon Marion Co & Park of Commerce Airport (X35), Dunnellon, FLTo Crystal River Airport (CGC), Crystal River, 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- 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
- Fuel starvation
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Fluid, fuel › Starvation
- Fuel system, screen › Contamination
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the initial climb after takeoff, engine power reduced to idle, and the airplane started losing altitude immediately. The pilot maneuvered the airplane to avoid trees, and the airplane impacted the ground and slid to a stop. A post-crash fire erupted, and the pilot and passengers exited the airplane. The majority of the airframe was consumed by the post-crash fire. During examination of the engine, the carburetor inlet screen was removed and found to be contaminated with a large amount of debris. The contamination was removed from the screen and determined to be an accumulation of small ferrous particles. The fuel screens in the fuel selector valve and in the fuel tanks were examined, and no debris was found. A sample of the material found in the carburetor inlet screen was sent to an outside laboratory to compare the composition of the residue to a sample of the insulation from the hose supplying fuel to the carburetor. The laboratory found that the debris inside the carburetor did not match the insulation material. The source of the debris was not identified.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power as a result of fuel starvation due to a contaminated carburetor fuel inlet screen.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA06FA092
- Event ID
- 20060504X00503
- Case number
- MIA06FA092
- 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: c1a0a78b376a1e6ea4369dea38c469dd3c8547f21dcf27f2128b0c28f5aa79f1; retrieved 2026-09-21T08:59:08.927Z.