ANC97LA068 · Hammer AVID FLYER
Hammer AVID FLYER · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) during initial climb
From Chitina Airport (CXC) to Mc Carthy Airport (15Z)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC97LA068
- 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
Hammer AVID FLYER
- Aircraft type
- Hammer AVID FLYER
- 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
- N525BB
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chitina Airport (CXC)To Mc Carthy Airport (15Z), MCCARTHY, AK
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Engine assembly, piston › Improper
- Engine assembly, piston › Seized
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, overhaul, major, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was departing in a homebuilt airplane from a remote airstrip. After departure, the airplane climbed to about 250 feet above the ground, and then the engine suddenly lost power. The pilot performed a 180 degree turn back toward the runway, but landed in rough terrain, just short of the runway. The engine was overhauled 5 hours before the accident, and one piston was replaced with an oversize piston. Following the accident, an examination of the engine revealed the oversize piston was seized in the cylinder. The seized piston was found to be the same size as the cylinder bore.
Probable cause
improper overhaul of the engine, which resulted in a seized piston and resultant loss of engine power. Rough terrain in the emergency landing area was a related factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC97LA068
- Event ID
- 20001208X07838
- Case number
- ANC97LA068
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1997-05-04.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 934ac3cc16162eafea3cf59d7d1129d447044f0231d048cd7977723d0286280d; retrieved 2026-09-22T19:48:01.516Z.