ERA23LA359 · Aero Commander 500 S
Aero Commander 500 S · Accident en route
From Orlando Apopka Airport (X04) to Key West International Airport (EYW)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA23LA359
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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
Aero Commander 500 S
- Aircraft type
- Aero Commander 500
- 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
- N62WE
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Orlando Apopka Airport (X04), Apopka, FLTo Key West International Airport (EYW), Key West, FL
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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 · cruise
- 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 pilot was enroute to the destination airport and overflying the Gulf of Mexico when about 15 nautical miles from the airport and at an altitude of 3,000 ft, the right engine suddenly lost power. The pilot described that about that time, the fuel totalizers indicated that 48 gallons of fuel were onboard, and his fuel quantity gauge indicated similarly. He then contacted air traffic control and declared an emergency. Shortly thereafter, the left engine also suddenly lost power. The pilot attempted to troubleshoot the issue and restart both engines but was unsuccessful. He subsequently ditched the airplane and was rescued from the water without injury. The airplane was not recovered and could not be examined after the accident, therefore the reason for the loss of engine power could not be determined.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA23LA359
- Event ID
- 20230905192998
- Case number
- ERA23LA359
- 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, cause areas. 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: 030f6c47f3ef77925987d7a30263af11266f4d1ce3dee2c2219f6526f331eea7; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:04:55.788Z.