IAD96FA074 · Lake LA-4-200
NH Wing Civil Air Patrol Lake LA-4-200 · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Manchester-Boston Regional Airport (MHT) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD96FA074
- 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
Lake LA-4-200
- Aircraft type
- Lake LA-4
- 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
- N5040L
- Operator
- NH Wing Civil Air Patrol
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Manchester-Boston Regional Airport (MHT), Manchester, NHTo 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
- Landing · landing roll
- 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
- Loss of control on ground/water
- 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
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Sunapee, NH, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The pilot had not flown in make or model for 8 months. According to CAP regulations, in order to do water landings after such a lapse in flight time, the pilot was required to have a flight instructor with him. The pilot had called, reserved the airplane and gave the instructor's name who would be accompanying him during the flight. Witnesses saw the airplane land on the lake earlier and then saw an aborted takeoff attempt. His second takeoff attempt was successful and the pilot left the local area. The accident occurred on his return landing. A witness stated that he was surprised to see the airplane attempting to land because he did not normally see airplanes land in this area of the lake. Also, the witness stated that the winds in the area were strong and in the direction that the airplane was attempting to land, with 2-3 foot roller waves created by the high winds. He watched the airplane hit the water hard and bounce up approximately 10 to 15 feet. He heard the engine go to full power, at which time the tail of the airplane hit the water. The nose of the airplane pitched forward and 'pile drived' itself into the water. The airplane flipped and floated on its back for approximately 10 minutes. By the time the witness got into his boat and got to the airplane it was already underwater and sinking rapidly. The nonswimmer pilot was recovered later that day from inside the airplane not wearing personal floatation devices. The cause of death was attributed to drowning.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane. Factors in this accident were: the pilot's lack of currency in type and model airplane, and not following the requirement for the pilot to have a flight instructor onboard during water landings.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD96FA074
- Event ID
- 20001208X05783
- Case number
- IAD96FA074
- 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: 9e6abdac3ac6704a78c6567d4b8f9247cf79ad4eb59ee04f8cf848cad19488cb; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:21:49.696Z.