MIA07LA077 · Terrence A. Sack Terrair Express
Terrence A. Sack Terrair Express · Accident: abrupt maneuver on approach
From Bacon County Airport (KAMG) to Lakeland Linder International Airport (KLAL)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA07LA077
- 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
- 2 · 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
Terrence A. Sack Terrair Express
- Aircraft type
- Terrence A Sack TERRAIR EXPRESS
- 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
- N456TS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bacon County Airport (KAMG), Alma, GATo Lakeland Linder International Airport (KLAL), Lakeland, 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
- 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
- Abrupt maneuver
- 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; Tree(s)
- 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
- Pilot in command › Airspeed, 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 airplane's fuel tanks were filled with 100LL fuel before departure. The flight proceeded to the Lakeland Linder Regional Airport for an annual fly-in event, and in accordance with NOTAM procedures, the flight proceeded perpendicular towards runway "27R." The pilot turned left onto the downwind leg (right traffic for runway 27R), then onto right base for runway 27R, and was cleared to land. Approximately 15 seconds later the controller advised the pilot not to overshoot runway 27R and again advised the pilot he was cleared to land on runway 27R. The airplane banked steep, stalled, and descended uncontrolled impacting a tree then the ground where a postcrash fire consumed the airplane. Witness accounts were consistent with the engine operating at the time of the in-flight loss of control. The accident site was located southeast of the approach ends of runway 27R and runway 27L, indicating the pilot overshot the runway. No evidence of preimpact failure or malfunction was noted for the flight controls, or engine assembly. The accident flight was the first time the pilot had flown his airplane into Sun-N-Fun; his previous flight there in a different airplane was 12 years earlier. The downwind entry procedure at Sun-N-Fun is made at a 90-degree angle, which differs from the standard 45-degree entry.
Probable cause
The failure of the pilot to maintain airspeed while turning base to final which led to a stall. A contributing factor in the accident was the pilot's lack of recent experience.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA07LA077
- Event ID
- 20070420X00441
- Case number
- MIA07LA077
- 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: 440680572d4e3a6905994977ac24b632d72404b10a45b721379b758ff8b72082; retrieved 2026-09-20T16:43:47.970Z.