ERA14LA346 · Cessna 172N
Dean International Cessna 172N · Accident: abrupt maneuver while maneuvering
From Miami Executive Airport (TMB) to Miami Executive Airport (TMB)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA14LA346
- 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
Cessna 172N
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- 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
- N737TP
- Operator
- Dean International
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Miami Executive Airport (TMB), Miami, FLTo Miami Executive Airport (TMB), Miami, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 37 years (built 1977)
- 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
- Maneuvering · low-altitude flying
- 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
- Abrupt maneuver
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
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
The student pilot departed on a local, solo instructional flight. According to the flight instructor, the student was briefed to complete three takeoffs and landings and to stay in the airport traffic pattern. Instead, the student completed one takeoff and landing and then departed the airport traffic pattern. Witnesses reported seeing the airplane in level flight about 2 hours later over the ocean 20 miles from the departure airport. Two witnesses said that the airplane's nose "pitched up" momentarily before the airplane descended vertically at "full power." One witness described the sound of the engine as "wide open" and noted that it was accelerating throughout the descent. All of the witnesses said that the airplane went "straight down" and that it did not rotate.
Examination of the wreckage revealed damage consistent with a vertical descent at high speed and no preimpact mechanical anomalies. The autopsy report determined that the cause of death was "airplane crash." For the airplane to descend straight down, the forward pressure on the yoke must be increased proportionally with the increase in airspeed. If control positions remained constant, the dive would shallow out as it progressed.
Probable cause
The airplane’s vertical descent into water for reasons that could not be determined because postaccident airplane examinations revealed no mechanical anomalies.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA14LA346
- Event ID
- 20140721X23027
- Case number
- ERA14LA346
- 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: e1d5aca5acba470c695d9eab5bb3a788ddd2ccf5fab2de239b8db28baedd7418; retrieved 2026-09-14T17:22:13.523Z.