ERA18LA031 · Piper PA46 500TP
Belleaire Piper PA46 500TP · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) during takeoff
From St. Petersburg Clearwater International Airport (PIE) to Pensacola International Airport (PNS)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA18LA031
- 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 PA46 500TP
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA46
- 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
- N863RB
- Operator
- Belleaire
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From St. Petersburg Clearwater International Airport (PIE), Clearwater, FLTo Pensacola International Airport (PNS), Pensacola, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 12 years (built 2005)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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 (partial)
- 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 pilot performed a preflight inspection of the turboprop airplane and an engine run-up with no anomalies noted. The takeoff roll and lift off from the runway were normal; however, when the pilot initiated a landing gear retraction, the engine torque decreased, but the rpm did not change. The torque then surged back to full power and continued to surge as the pilot attempted to return to the runway. The left wing of the airplane struck the ground, and the airplane came to rest in the grass on the side of the runway. Examination of the engine, engine accessories, and propeller revealed no evidence of mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation before the accident. The reason for the partial loss of engine power could not be determined based on the available information.
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined based on the available information.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA18LA031
- Event ID
- 20171127X95417
- Case number
- ERA18LA031
- 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: 782c69f18b3ca7af1994c01a955fcfc18246fa8ba5b58cfe753f31ef04db58da; retrieved 2026-09-16T06:02:27.777Z.