MIA83FA093
1983-03-20 · TAMPA, Florida, United States · Serious · 1 aircraft · Status: Completed
Airport TPA
Aircraft involved
Factual narrative
THE ACCIDENT OCCURRED DURING AN INSTRUMENT TAKEOFF IN IMC. THE SKY WAS OBSCURED & VISIBILITY ZERO. AFTER LIFT-OFF THE ACFT BEGAN TO SETTLE. THE PLT STATED HE AGGRAVATED THE SITUATION BY ADVANCING DOWN TRIM WHICH WAS HIS ROUTINE TO ESTABLISH A 5 DEG CLIMB PITCH. HE FURTHER AGGRAVATED THE SITUATION BY ENGAGING THE AUTOPILOT. ON 'HDG' MODE THE AUTOPILOT HOLDS THE ACTIVE TRIM WHICH WAS STILL DOWN. THE PLT ALSO THOUGHT HE SET THE HSI BUG TO THE RWY HEADING OF 360 DEG. AFTER THE ACCIDENT HE FOUND THE 'HDG' BUG ON 330 DEG. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database (Pre-2008 Archive) Retrieved: 2026-02-12
Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file
NTSB_1983_MIA83FA093.txt.
Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb.
Full investigation docket on
data.ntsb.gov ↗.
Search this event elsewhere
External sources are reported, not agency: signal that something happened, not fact about what happened.
- TallyAero Live Wire Aviation press
- NTSB CAROL Agency ↗
- NTSB Docket Agency ↗
- Aviation Safety Network Aviation press ↗
- Kathryn's Report Aviation press ↗
- Aviation Herald Aviation press ↗
- AVweb Aviation press ↗
- Pilots of America Community ↗
- Reddit /r/flying Community ↗
- FlightAware Aviation press ↗
- AOPA accident database Aviation press ↗
- Google News News ↗
- DuckDuckGo News ↗
Related research
Matched on aircraft type or causal vocabulary (imc, autopilot). All research papers
- arXiv 2025 · arXiv preprint ROSflight 2.0: Lean ROS 2-Based Autopilot for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
ROSflight is a lean, open-source autopilot ecosystem for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Designed by researchers for researchers, it is built to lower the barrier to entry to UAV research and acceler…
- arXiv 2025 · arXiv preprint ROSplane 2.0: A Fixed-Wing Autopilot for Research
Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) research requires the integration of cutting-edge technology into existing autopilot frameworks.
- arXiv 2024 · arXiv preprint A Data-Driven Autopilot for Fixed-Wing Aircraft Based on Model Predictive Control
Autopilots for fixed-wing aircraft are typically designed based on linearized aerodynamic models consisting of stability and control derivatives obtained from wind-tunnel testing.
- arXiv 2022 · arXiv preprint Experimental Flight Testing of a Fault-Tolerant Adaptive Autopilot for Fixed-Wing Aircraft
This paper presents an adaptive autopilot for fixed-wing aircraft and compares its performance with a fixed-gain autopilot.
- arXiv 2021 · arXiv preprint An Adaptive Digital Autopilot for Fixed-Wing Aircraft with Actuator Faults
This paper develops an adaptive digital autopilot for a fixed-wing aircraft and compares its performance with a fixed-gain autopilot.
- arXiv 2026 · arXiv preprint Robust Adaptive Sliding-Mode Control for Damaged Fixed-Wing UAVs
Many unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can remain aerodynamically flyable after sustaining structural or control surface damage, yet insufficient robustness in conventional autopilots often leads to mis…