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Atlas / NTSB / MIA85LA177

NTSB CAROL · Event

Event MIA85LA177

1985-05-26 ST.PETERSBURG, Florida, United States Airport · SPG Minor 1 aircraft Status: Completed

Registry · N1211A

FAA Aircraft Registry record.

Make / Model

PILATUS PC-12/45

Year of manufacture

2005

Engine

P&W CANADA PT6A-67B (1200 hp)

Seats / Engines

12 seats · 1 engine

Last airworthiness date

20141016

ADS-B equipped

Yes — Mode-S A059E5

Registrant of record

STAR CHILD 3 LLC

Source: FAA Aircraft Registry (releasable master file).

Aircraft involved

Factual narrative

THE PILOT WAS ASSIGNED AN AIRCRAFT WITH A RECENTLY OVERHAULED ENGINE TO TOW A BANNER. HE PREFLIGHTED, STARTED AND RAN-UP THE ENGINE 3 TIMES. EACH TIME THE ENGINE RAN ROUGH AND LOST RPM ON MAGNETO CHECKS. AFTER EACH OCCURRENCE, COMPANYMAINTENANCE PERSONNEL CLEANED THE SPARKPLUGS AND RELEASED THE ACFT FOR FLIGHT. THE PILOT TEST FLEW THE ACFT AND STATED THAT IT PERFORMED NORMALLY. HE THEN LOWERED THE BANNER HOOK, DOVE DOWN TO ENGAGED THE BANNER AND STARTED TO CLIMB. THE ENGINE BEGAN TO RUN ROUGH AND LOST POWER. THE PILOT ATTEMPTED TO JETTISON THE BANNER TWICE & COULD NOT. HE THEN ATTEMPTED TO LAND ON AN INTERSECTING RUNWAY AND CRASHED. AN EXAM OF THE ENG REVEALED THAT THE SPARK PLUGS WERE OIL FOULED/WET. THE CYLINDERS OF THE ENG HAD JUST BEEN INSTALLED & THERE WAS NO RECORD OF AN ENG RUN-IN. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database (Pre-2008 Archive) Retrieved: 2026-02-12

Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file NTSB_1985_MIA85LA177.txt. Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb. Full investigation docket on data.ntsb.gov ↗.

Related research

What the literature says.

Academic papers and agency reports matching this event's aircraft type or causal vocabulary (stall, maintenance). Sourced from NASA NTRS, NTSB Safety Studies, FAA CAMI, AOPA Air Safety Institute, Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons, arXiv, and the Semantic Scholar academic graph.

Browse the full corpus — academia portal ↗