ERA10FA052 · Aero Commander 100
Aero Commander 100 · Accident en route
From Miami Executive Airport (TMB) to Ocala International Airport - Jim Taylor Field (OCF)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10FA052
- 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
- 1 · 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
Aero Commander 100
- Aircraft type
- Aero Commander 100
- 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
- N4139X
- Operator
- Velazquez Edmundo
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Miami Executive Airport (TMB), Miami, FLTo Ocala International Airport - Jim Taylor Field (OCF), Ocala, 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
- Unknown or undetermined
- 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 oper/perf/capability
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The non-instrument rated pilot departed at night for an intended flight over the Everglades, to a destination airport north of the departure airport. After takeoff, while flying in a northerly direction over an area with no ground reference lights other than from vehicles on an east/west highway, the airplane climbed to a maximum altitude of 2,800 feet, then began descending at a rate of 3,000 feet-per-minute and flew over the highway. The airplane then deviated slightly to the right at the end of the flight, and impacted into the Everglades.
The pilot had only accumulated 2.8 hours of total night experience, all of which was flown in the same night, 8 months prior to the accident.
Examination of the airframe, flight controls, engine, and engine accessories revealed no evidence of preimpact mechanical failure or malfunction. Total electrical failure was eliminated because transponder returns were noted from the beginning of the flight to within 0.3 nautical miles of the crash site. Additionally, light bulb filament stretching consistent with electrical power at impact was noted for the cockpit overhead light bulb.
Although the pilot had a history of coronary artery disease and had a cardiac catheterization and stent placement 2 years prior to the accident, the autopsy did not reveal any evidence of the presence of an incapacitating medical event during the accident flight. Additionally, the investigation revealed no evidence of the pilot suffering from fatigue or sleep apnea.
Probable cause
The flight's descent for undetermined reasons, resulting in the in-flight collision with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10FA052
- Event ID
- 20091108X12856
- Case number
- ERA10FA052
- 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. 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: 805330fc2128c75e62ba4635b857467e4434cea50b7353961d9445db01f81efe; retrieved 2026-09-13T20:33:28.088Z.