CEN19LA252 · Piper PA28 140
Osorio Aviation Piper PA28 140 · Accident: fuel contamination during takeoff
From Miami Executive Airport (TMB) to Miami Executive Airport (TMB)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN19LA252
- 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 PA28 140
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA28
- 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
- N5915U
- Operator
- Osorio Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Miami Executive Airport (TMB), Miami, FLTo Miami Executive Airport (TMB), Miami, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 49 years (built 1970)
- 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
- Fuel contamination
- 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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor and student pilot conducted a preflight inspection of the airplane before the local flight. All the indications were "normal" during the run up. At 150-200 ft above ground level, the engine had a partial loss of power. The instructor subsequently took over the controls; he reported that "everything" was good. During a turn to land the airplane on a parallel runway, the engine lost all power and the instructor decided to conduct a forced landing on a corn field between runways, where the airplane sustained substantial damage.
An examination of the airplane revealed that the left wing fuel tank contained 16 oz of water. The gascolator bowl and carburetor contained a liquid consistent with water and fuel. It is likely that the flight instructor and student pilot did not conduct a thorough preflight inspection and did not detect and remove the water in the fuel system, which led to the loss of engine power.
Probable cause
The flight instructor's and student pilot's inadequate preflight inspection of the fuel system for water contamination, which resulted in a loss of engine power during takeoff and subsequent forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN19LA252
- Event ID
- 20190805X13252
- Case number
- CEN19LA252
- 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: 2a16b70262cdeaa3212c1f44f8e93931425d8c82b60bae62baa5730809572337; retrieved 2026-09-16T09:39:45.375Z.