ERA10FA028 · Piper PA 46-350P
Citrus Aviation Piper PA 46-350P · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Gainesville Regional Airport (GNV) to Lakeland Linder International Airport (LAL)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10FA028
- 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
- 3 · 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 46-350P
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-46
- 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
- N98ZZ
- Operator
- Citrus Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Gainesville Regional Airport (GNV), Gainesville, 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 · 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot fueled the airplane prior to departure and flew uneventfully for approximately 30 minutes. The airplane then descended to 2,000 feet on approach to the destination airport, during night visual meteorological conditions. About 30 seconds after being cleared for a visual approach, the pilot declared an emergency to air traffic control and requested assistance to the nearest airport. The controller provided a vector to divert and distance to the nearest suitable airport. The pilot subsequently reported "engine out, engine out" and the airplane impacted wooded terrain about 4 miles northeast of runway 22 at the alternate airport. A postcrash fire consumed a majority of the wreckage. Examination of the wreckage, including teardown examination of the engine, did not reveal any preimpact mechanical malfunctions; however, the fuel system and ignition system were consumed by postcrash fire and could not be tested.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power during a night approach for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10FA028
- Event ID
- 20091023X21225
- Case number
- ERA10FA028
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2009-10-24.
- API snapshot SHA-256: dd740d376002d2a2d12ab684d8bc5ec14e0ad77b3799bbb2134e5b2ca03fc61e; retrieved 2026-09-13T20:32:01.973Z.