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Atlas / NTSB / MIA91LA045

NTSB CAROL · Event

Event MIA91LA045

1990-12-16 PALMETTO, Florida, United States Airport · 48X None 1 aircraft Status: Completed

Aircraft involved

Probable cause & findings

POOR PREFLIGHT PLANNING BY THE PILOT DUE TO HIS FAILURE TO PURCHASE FUEL BEFORE DEPARTURE RESULTING IN THE TOTAL LOSS OF ENGINE POWER DUE TO FUEL EXHAUSTION. CONTRIBUTING TO THE ACCIDENT WAS THE INACCURATE FUEL GAUGES.

Factual narrative

DURING NORMAL CRUISE FLIGHT, THE ENGINE QUIT DUE TO FUEL EXHAUSTION. A FORCED LANDING WAS MADE IN A FIELD AND THE AIRPLANE NOSED OVER. THE STUDENT PILOT STATED THAT HE WAS NOT TOLD TO PURCHASE FUEL. THE MANAGER OF THE FLIGHT SCHOOL DENIED THIS. THE PILOT FURTHER STATED THE FUEL QUANTITY INDICATORS WERE NOT INDICATING EMPTY WHEN THE ENGINE QUIT. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database (Pre-2008 Archive) Retrieved: 2026-02-12

Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file NTSB_1990_MIA91LA045.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 (fuel exhaustion). 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 ↗