SEA97LA022 · Collier Q200
Collier Q200 · Accident: loss of engine power while maneuvering
From Valley View Airport (5S9) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA97LA022
- 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
Collier Q200
- Aircraft type
- Collier Q200
- 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
- N200CQ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Valley View Airport (5S9), ORTo 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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
- Wire, transmission
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Fuel system, carburetor › Not safetied
- Pilot in command › Maintenance, adjustment, inadequate
- Throttle/power lever, linkage › Loose
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a maintenance test flight of a home built aircraft, the pilot apparently initiated an emergency landing on a gravel road. The road was bordered on both sides by tall trees. On the right side of the road, power lines (lower than tree top level) paralleled the road. During the descent, the right canard and right rear wing came in contact with the power lines. The airplane then collided with the road and came to rest off the right side of the road among the trees. Wreckage examination revealed evidence that the butterfly valve in the carburetor was in the closed position, and the throttle stop was positioned approximately 1/8-inch from the stop screw. The throttle arm clamping screw was loose, and the throttle arm rotated easily on the butterfly valve shaft. Mandatory safety wire that was to be applied to the throttle arm clamping screw had not been used, and the safety wire on the throttle arm clamping screw was slack and provided inadequate security. Friends of the pilot reported that approximately one week before the accident, he was having trouble with the fuel mixture; they presumed that the pilot had been making adjustments to the carburetor.
Probable cause
inadequate maintenance adjustment by the owner/pilot/mechanic, by not using safety wire to secure the throttle arm clamping screw, which resulted in a loose clamping screw and rotation of the throttle arm with respect to the butterfly valve shaft. The lack of suitable terrain for an emergency landing was a factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA97LA022
- Event ID
- 20001208X06986
- Case number
- SEA97LA022
- 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: 6e7d028bb0eb59708ac6648e60f7f84b186f370d81ce6e8d73da2baf40023384; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:09:11.536Z.