ERA14LA325 · Piper PA 24-250
Piper PA 24-250 · Accident on approach
From Shelby County Airport (EET) to Monroe County Aeroplex Airport (MVC)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA14LA325
- 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
Piper PA 24-250
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-24
- 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
- N5923P
- Operator
- Vance Alexander
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Shelby County Airport (EET), Alabaster, ALTo Monroe County Aeroplex Airport (MVC), Monroeville, AL
- Aircraft age
- About 55 years (built 1959)
- 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 go-around
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor reported that he and the pilot-rated passenger departed on a cross-country flight with 30 gallons of fuel in each of the two wing tanks. While the airplane was about 100 ft above the runway at the destination airport, the flight instructor applied full power to perform a go-around. When the airplane reached about 400 ft above ground level, the engine quit. The engine regained power briefly, but it then lost total power. The flight instructor subsequently conducted a forced landing, and the airplane impacted trees, which resulted in substantial damage to both wings and the fuselage. A postaccident examination of the airplane, engine, and fuel system revealed no malfunctions or anomalies. Although the airplane was operating in conditions conducive to serious carburetor icing at descent power at the time of the accident, it could not be determined if the power loss was a result of carburetor ice.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined because postaccident examination of the engine and fuel system revealed no anomalies.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA14LA325
- Event ID
- 20140703X53918
- Case number
- ERA14LA325
- 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: 1452ca9869bdfe5390a1fc30a1590d73a605c79167f148b6b26c2f79f4a9e13b; retrieved 2026-09-16T00:50:25.489Z.