MIA07FA117 · Piper PA-30
Piper PA-30 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Lakeland Linder International Airport (LAL) to Lakeland Linder International Airport (LAL)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA07FA117
- 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
Piper PA-30
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-30
- 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
- N387RP
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lakeland Linder International Airport (LAL), Lakeland, FLTo Lakeland Linder International Airport (LAL), 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
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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
- Flightcrew › Airspeed(vmc), not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The twin-engine airplane was recently purchased and had maintenance performed in preparation for its resale. The airplane had flown a total of approximately 10 hours during the 18-month period prior to the last annual inspection. The airplane flew an additional 10 hours during the approximate 1-month period after the inspection, until the accident. The airplane was several miles south of the departing airport, at an estimated altitude of 1,500 feet above the ground, when witnesses heard engine problems just before the airplane went into a nose-low, near-vertical spiraling descent, completing several revolutions before impacting a dirt road. Evidence at the scene was consistent with a loss of power on the right engine. Evidence that the fuel system for the right engine had been exposed to water for an extended period was identified, but the effect of this exposure as it related to the operation of the right engine could not be determined. Besides the possibility of fuel contamination, no other airworthiness issues were identified that could account for the loss of engine power.
Probable cause
Failure of the flight crew to maintain minimal controllable airspeed following a total loss of power in the right engine.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA07FA117
- Event ID
- 20070716X00937
- Case number
- MIA07FA117
- 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. 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: c2109ab02ad5da27ffe08af3afde826b1f0e5d43f4bd73640975fcf2a7b725ec; retrieved 2026-09-20T16:30:13.440Z.