NTSB CAROL · Event
Event MIA91IA201
Aircraft involved
Probable cause & findings
TOTAL LOSS OF ENGINE POWER DUE TO FUEL STARVATION CAUSED BY IMPROPER FUEL TANK SELECTOR POSITION BY THE PILOT-IN-COMMAND. CONTRIBUTING TO THE INCIDENT WAS THE PILOT'S TOTAL LACK OF EXPERIENCE.
Factual narrative
DURING THE BASE LEG FOR A FULL STOP LANDING, THE ENG EXPERIENCED A TOTAL LOSS OF POWER DUE TO FUEL STARVATION. THE PLT REPOSITIONED THE FUEL SELECTOR BUT THE ENG DID NOT START. UNABLE TO LAND AT THE ARPT, HE DITCHED THE ACFT WHICH NOSED OVER AFTER IMPACT. THE ACFT WAS RECOVERED & THE LT FUEL TANK, WHICH WAS FULL, WAS DRAINED & FOUND TO CONTAIN 5-10 GALS OF FUEL. THE REMAINDER WAS WATER. THE RT FUEL TANK, ALSO FULL, WAS DRAINED & FOUND TO CONTAIN WATER. NO FUEL WAS PRESENT. THE FUEL SELECTOR WAS POSITIONED TO THE LT TANK. THE ENG WAS EXAMINED WITH NO EVIDENCE OF FAILURE OR MALFUNCTION. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database (Pre-2008 Archive) Retrieved: 2026-02-12
Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file
NTSB_1991_MIA91IA201.txt.
Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb.
Full investigation docket on
data.ntsb.gov ↗.
Beyond the agency record
Search this event elsewhere.
Pre-filled searches into the sources where news + community discussion of aviation events lives. External sources are reported, not agency. Treat them as signal that something happened, not as fact about what happened.
Entity-clustered aviation events in the press — last 24 hr + 30-day archive.
Official agency record + docket.
Investigative docket: factual reports, photos, transcripts.
Long-running aviation incident database (Flight Safety Foundation).
Community NTSB synthesis blog — often has photos and witness reports.
Gold-standard aviation incident blog.
Aviation industry news search.
GA pilot forum — informed but rumor-prone.
GA pilot subreddit search.
Tail-number page — flight history (free tier limited).
AOPA Air Safety Institute search.
Mainstream press coverage. Recent events only.
Privacy-preserving news search.
External links open in a new tab. We don't ingest their content; we deep-link search queries.
Related research
What the literature says.
Academic papers and agency reports matching this event's aircraft type or causal vocabulary (fuel starvation). 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 ↗