ERA19TA111 · Piper PA32 260
Piper PA32 260 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Treasure Coast International Airport (KFPR) to Great Harbour Cay Airport (MYBG)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA19TA111
- 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
- 0
- 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 PA32 260
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA32
- 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
- N1563X
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Treasure Coast International Airport (KFPR), Fort Pierce, FLTo Great Harbour Cay Airport (MYBG), Bullocks Harbou
- Aircraft age
- About 44 years (built 1975)
- 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 · change of cruise level
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot departed on the personal flight after topping off the airplane's fuel tanks. He reported that, about 15 minutes after leveling off at 3,500 ft mean sea level, he initiated a climb to 7,500 ft, and the engine immediately started to "sputter"; the airplane was about 20 miles off the coast of Florida over the Atlantic Ocean. He turned on the fuel boost pump, switched fuel tanks, and applied carburetor heat, to no avail. The engine lost total power shortly thereafter. The pilot subsequently ditched the airplane into the ocean, egressed, and was rescued. The airplane was not recovered, which precluded a postaccident examination.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined based on the available evidence, which resulted in a ditched landing in the ocean.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA19TA111
- Event ID
- 20190228X70708
- Case number
- ERA19TA111
- 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: d045cc7aae0dbf1ceb848f90f020647bdbe7a019e646d7e8936c849b1b5e951e; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:37:30.087Z.