NYC95LA110 · Highcraft BUCCANEER II BUCCANEER
Highcraft BUCCANEER II BUCCANEER · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) while maneuvering
From No airport to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC95LA110
- 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
- API-reported fatalities
- 1 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- 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
Highcraft BUCCANEER II BUCCANEER
- Aircraft type
- Highcraft BUCCANEER
- 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
- UNREG
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From No airportTo not recorded
- 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
- Maneuvering
- First occurrenceThe 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
- Total loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Stall/spin
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Engine assembly, piston › Seized
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
Not plotted · Location withheld: coordinates are missing, conflicting, invalid, or have no accepted acquisition method. No substitute location has been invented.
NTSB narrative
A WITNESS OBSERVED THE PILOT FLYING HIS TWO PLACE, UNREGISTERED, EXPERIMENTAL HOME BUILT AIRPLANE IN THE LOCAL AREA, AT AN ALTITUDE OF BETWEEN 200 TO 300 FEET AGL. THE WITNESS TURNED AWAY FROM THE AIRPLANE, AND WITHIN ONE MINUTE HEARD THE SOUND OF A CRASH. THE AIRPLANE WAS FOUND IN AN OPEN FIELD WHERE IT HAD IMPACTED IN A NOSE DOWN ATTITUDE, FATALLY INJURING THE PILOT. ACCORDING TO A WRITTEN REPORT FROM THE FAA, EXAMINATION OF THE NUMBER ONE CYLINDER REVEALED, '...SCORING ON CYLINDER WALLS ABOVE THE INTAKE AND EXHAUST PORTS...', AND '...PISTON SCORED ON THE SIDE UP THROUGH THE PISTON RINGS....' ADDITIONALLY, THE PILOT DID NOT POSSESS A PILOT CERTIFICATE OR MEDICAL CERTIFICATE.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power due to the seizure of the number one cylinder pistion and the pilot's failure to maintain adequate airspeed which resulted in a stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC95LA110
- Event ID
- 20001207X03534
- Case number
- NYC95LA110
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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. 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: c7da40003143a237010abeb826f3a673adc93a8a9d08d1a119ca62489934ee4a; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:46:46.119Z.