NYC08LA116 · Diamond Aircraft Industries DA 20
Diamond Aircraft Industries DA 20 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Florida Keys Marathon International Airport (MTH) to Key West International Airport (EYW)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC08LA116
- 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
Diamond Aircraft Industries DA 20
- Aircraft type
- Diamond DA-20
- 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
- N859MS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Florida Keys Marathon International Airport (MTH), Marathon, FLTo Key West International Airport (EYW), Key West, 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 · descent
- Defining eventThe 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 (total)
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After maneuvering in the local area for approximately 15 minutes, the pilot initiated a descent, at idle power, to return to the airport. As he leveled the airplane in the traffic pattern (over water), he advanced the throttle to increase power; however, the engine did not respond. The pilot attempted, unsuccessfully, to restart the engine, and then prepared for a forced landing to the water, approximately 6 miles off shore. After the airplane came to rest, the pilot egressed and entered the life raft he had in the airplane. The airplane sank after about 5 minutes and was not recovered. The pilot purchased the airplane new approximately 2 years prior to the accident and no recent maintenance had been performed. Fuel records indicated the airplane was last refueled approximately 1 month prior with 13.8 gallons of fuel. According to the pilot, he last flew the airplane approximately 2 to 3 weeks prior to the accident, and prior to the accident flight, he departed with "just under full fuel," approximately 20 gallons.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC08LA116
- Event ID
- 20080320X00346
- Case number
- NYC08LA116
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: eebd3c4e2cb88e6e616844729d2a56c7d04b71d5d695b77a35b015754e2ae842; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:26:44.838Z.