SEA97LA039 · Stinson 108-2
Yelm Aviation Stinson 108-2 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Friday Harbor Airport (FHR) to Zema Private Airport (WA72)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA97LA039
- 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
- 0 · 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
Stinson 108-2
- Aircraft type
- Stinson 108
- 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
- N233C
- Operator
- Yelm Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Friday Harbor Airport (FHR), WATo Zema Private Airport (WA72), Yelm, WA
- 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
- En route · climb to cruise
- 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)
- 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
- Powerplant › Undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After takeoff, the airplane was climbing through 2,500 feet mean sea level (MSL), when the engine began to vibrate severely and make loud metallic banging sounds. After about 10 seconds, the engine experienced a full loss of power, and the pilot was unable to get it restarted. Because he was too far from shore to be able to glide to land, he elected to ditch the airplane next to a fishing trawler. The airplane nosed over at impact with the water and sank to a depth of about 300 feet after the pilot safely egressed. The airplane and its maintenance log books were not recovered.
Probable cause
failure of the engine (powerplant) for undetermined reason(s). A factor relating to the accident include: being over water at the time of power failure.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA97LA039
- Event ID
- 20001208X07247
- Case number
- SEA97LA039
- 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: a0b7fc4a3ee0c8ea1c6bbd26ef36d67c65415eecf69f4b63a77c57aa5c25bf42; retrieved 2026-09-22T20:36:09.286Z.